Juneteenth and the Next Chapter in the Fight for Workers’ Rights

As the commemoration of the end of legal slavery in the United States in 1865, Juneteenth marks a founding moment in the movement for economic, social, and racial justice, not just for Black Americans but for all Americans.

However, freedom from slavery did not bring freedom from exploitation in the decades to follow. Oppressive systems and policies revived after Reconstruction continued to extract labor from Black workers while denying them full economic opportunity, security, and power.

Today, inequitable employment policies and paltry labor protections ensure that racial wealth gaps persist in our economy, with Black workers often experiencing the worst outcomes. And with the rise of artificial intelligence in reshaping the workplace, these disparities in outcomes are only worsening for Black Americans.

Black women are particularly exposed to the risks associated with AI-driven workplace change.

Black women’s unemployment is rising and reached 7.3 percent at the end of 2025, nearly double the rate for white women. As employers adopt AI tools, the burden of workforce reductions is falling disproportionately on Black women, who are heavily represented in many of the occupations most vulnerable to automation, including administrative support, human resources, training, customer service, and other workplace support roles.

This concentration has kept Black women in important but undervalued—and underpaid— occupations, limiting access to higher-paying opportunities. They face disproportionate exposure to job displacement, reduced hours, stalled advancement, and declining job quality. The threat is not only that jobs disappear; it’s that the jobs that remain become less stable, less predictable, and less capable of supporting a family.

Technological change should expand opportunity, not deepen inequality. As AI in the workplace continues to evolve, policymakers and employers must protect workers from discrimination, strengthen labor standards, invest in worker power, and modernize unemployment insurance so workers can maintain economic security during periods of job transition. These reforms help all working people, especially those most acutely at risk.

At NELP, our vision remains a good-jobs economy where every worker has access to a job that pays a living wage, includes basic protections, provides real economic security, and offers a fair opportunity to thrive regardless of race, gender, or background.

This Juneteenth, we honor the generations of Black workers whose labor built this country, and recommit ourselves to ensuring that the future of work advances freedom, dignity, and opportunity for all workers. Just as earlier generations fought systems that devalued and exploited Black labor, we must ensure emerging technologies do not recreate those inequities in new forms.