Nikki Porcher, a Georgia workforce and small business advocate who is running for state labor commissioner, says the reason so many Black women cannot find work is neither a lack of effort nor a lack of skill.
“The unemployment crisis among Black women is not about a lack of effort. It’s not about a lack of skill,” she wrote in an essay published in April 2026.
Porcher is not arguing from the outside. She founded Buy From A Black Woman, which has operated since 2016, and she says the organisation has helped more than 700 entrepreneurs generate over $6.12 million in revenue, working with partners including American Express, PayPal and Goldman Sachs. Her background is in education and community development.
Her argument is that Black women are already doing the work the labour market says it wants, and that the systems built to connect people to jobs and capital were not designed with them in it. The alternative many take is to build something of their own, which is the part of her own record she can put numbers against.
She discloses in the essay that she is a candidate for Georgia Labor Commissioner, the state office that oversees workforce programmes and unemployment claims.
That is the part worth sitting with. The person making this argument is asking for the job that would have to answer it.
