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The Economic Indicator Series: Understanding Our Economy By The Numbers

If we're going to create an economy where all people can regularly meet their daily needs, we must first understand the current state of our economy. This series reveals what labor market data really says about equity, opportunity, and who the economy is—and isn’t—working for.

For decades, labor market data has shown a difficult truth: Our economy has never worked for everyone, especially Black and brown people.

Each month (when the government isn’t shut down), the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases a jobs report that shapes how we understand the state of the economy. These numbers are powerful. So powerful, in fact, that in August 2025, the Trump administration fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer in an attempt to obscure the reality of the U.S. unemployment rate.

Accurate, complete data is essential to understanding our economy—how many jobs exist, who holds them, who is being left out, and how these patterns shape entire communities. But data alone rarely tells the full story.

That’s where this series comes in. Each month, when the BLS jobs report is released, we unpack one economic indicator that reveals a hidden truth about our economy. We go beyond the headlines and dive deeper into the numbers to uncover what they mean for real people, especially those too often left out of the economic narrative.

Explore the series
The Unemployment Rate for Black Women
An illustration of a Black woman viewed from behind through a magnifying glass, with a background of financial graphs and currency notes.

When the economy is strained, Black women are among the first to feel it. And when Black women are thriving in the economy, everyone does better.

Learn about the Black Women Best framework
Workers Are Losing Out
Economic Indicators #2: Immigrants and US-Born Workers

One of the Trump Administration's central lies—that immigrants "take jobs" from U.S.-born workers—reinforces its escalating, harmful actions against immigrant communities. But the data reveal that structural imbalances, not immigrants, are what keep working people from seeing their fair share of economic gains.

Learn how an economy built on exclusion is broken
Wealth Is Unequally Distributed by Race
Illustration of a hand reaching towards a piggy bank and a money bag, with icons of a house and arrows on a graph, symbolizing financial growth.

While the longest shutdown in U.S. history leaves millions of Americans with missed paychecks and mounting bills, this piece explores why we must build wealth for all, especially for communities that have been historically kept from economic opportunity. 
 

Learn how wealth is about more than comfort, it's about survival
What the Black Unemployment Rate Tells Us
Black worker in the foreground looking frustrated, with economic indicators floating in the background

While the government shutdown left us without recent economic data, the rising Black unemployment rate reveals essential truths about the state of our economy.

 
Learn more
More of Our Work
Economic Justice
Diverse group of warehouse workers meeting among the warehouse shelves.

Find our most recent work on economic justice issues and other, related issues.

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