Black Women
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Black Women’s Equal Pay Day has arrived when job loss, systemic failings, rising living costs, and more threaten its progress.

It’s 2026, and Black women still only make 65 cents to the white man’s dollar — and that’s only considering the ones who still have a job.

Black Women’s Equal Pay Day was commemorated once again on Tuesday, July 21, and arriving at a time like this, it really hits different this year.

“Today is Black Women’s Equal Pay Day,” Congresswoman Joyce Beatty began in a post on Threads. 

“Black women have long been told we have to work twice as hard for less—and far too often, that’s still the reality,” she continued. “Nearly half of Black women report being paid less than a coworker doing the same job. I’m proud to cosponsor the Black Women’s Equal Pay Day Resolution because equal work deserves equal pay.”

“It’s Black Women’s Equal Pay Day, and we know in this country, unfortunately, Black women tend to be undervalued, underresourced, and expected to do more with less,” Rep. Jasmine Crockett said in a video making the rounds on social media.

She added, “The same work for the same pay. This really shouldn’t be a hard concept that Black women should get paid.”

And yet, despite Black Women’s Equal Pay Day existing for over a decade as a way to bring awareness to the unique pay disparities Black women face, it arrived this year at a time when more than 300,000 Black women have been pushed out of the workforce, DEI initiatives aimed at bolstering Black women in the workplace are under attack, and an economy is increasingly pushing many to the brink financially.

According to Equal Pay Today, the national coalition behind Black Women’s Equal Pay Day, the 65 cents per dollar drops to 63 cents when part-time and part-year workers are included, and it falls even further, to 52 cents, in states like Louisiana. The disparities are even worse for Black LGBTQ+ individuals.

Presently, these disparities are costing Black women more than $1 million in lost income over a lifetime, according to Equal Pay Day’s 2026 Black Women’s Wage Report. In 2025, Black women, especially college-educated Black women, saw the largest decline in employment and labor force participation in the country. According to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for Black women ages 20 and over rose to 6.2% in May of this year, outpacing the national average of 4.2%. Black women also experience higher rates of poverty than both white men and white women, rates that have been rising in recent years.

Meanwhile, 69 percent of Black mothers are breadwinners for their families, only underscoring why Black women, when more than half are leading households, need to be paid like it. This year alone, according to a poll released on Black Women’s Equal Pay Day by the NCBCP and Black Women’s Roundtable in partnership with The Root, forty-four percent say they have cut back on groceries the past three months, while nearly half say they’ve had to cut back on their household budget in some way over the past year. Compared to white non-Hispanic men, Black women, on average, have generated approximately 90 percent less wealth. 

“A paycheck is more than a number. It’s groceries on the table, rent paid, dreams invested in, and security for families,” Congresswoman Janelle Bynum wrote in a post about the day.

Officials with the Equal Pay Today campaign wrote in a release that, “The wage gap isn’t inevitable. It’s the result of policy choices, and it can be fixed with policy solutions.”

The organization outlines how systemic discrimination, unequal access to opportunity, occupational segregation into low-wage, undervalued industries, pay inequity, pay secrecy and reliance on salary history, a lack of paid leave and caregiver protections, poverty-level minimum wages, subminimum wages, wage theft, harassment and discrimination, and attacks on civil rights enforcement infrastructure all contribute to driving the wage gap.

According to the coalition, confronting those systemic barriers by tackling occupational segregation, strengthening pay equity laws, expanding caregiver protections, increasing pay transparency, raising the wage floor, creating stronger workplace protections, and enforcing those policies are among the best paths forward.

Dr. Venessa M. Perry, a psychologist, executive coach, and author, wrote in a post on Threads, “Today is Black Women’s Equal Pay Day — the day our pay finally ‘catches up’ to what white men earned last year. 65 cents on the dollar. Later this year than last. This isn’t a knowledge gap. It’s a structural one. My work exists because Black and Brown women deserve more than resilience as a strategy. We deserve equity, investment, and rooms built to let us flourish — not just survive.”