The Exit Project (EP)

Since January 2025, more than 600,000 Black women have been pushed out of the U.S. labor market, according to economist Katica Roy; the Institute for Women's Policy Research puts its own figure at more than 250,000 job losses in just the first eight months of that period alone. The Exit Project exists to document what those numbers can't: how the women living inside the stats narrate what happened, and where they draw the line between what was taken from them and what they chose.

*This study was formerly called the Voluntary Exit Project. I chose to drop “voluntary” from the title, because the word assumed an answer the research hadn't earned yet.

Method

Responses are coded across five core analytical domains:

• Exit Typology: Mapping the structural and situational mechanics of how the departure occurred.

• Decision-Making: Tracing the turning points, calculations, and constraints leading up to the exit.

• Psychological & Emotional Experience: Documenting the affective toll, burnout, and bodily impact of the environment.

• Agency & Self-Framing: Analyzing how participants themselves narrate their own role, power, and culpability in what happened.

• Structural Attribution:‍ ‍Locating the external mechanisms that respondents name or sense as forces behind their exit or their ability to re-enter work.

The project builds its typology inductively, allowing patterns to emerge directly from the sample rather than forcing data into pre-existing boxes. As a result, claims are strictly scoped to what the sample reveals, rather than being overextended as a sweeping generalization of Black women's exits at large.

How to Participate

Tell Me How You Left

If you're a Black woman or a Black person of another marginalized gender who has left the paid labor force since January 2025, the Exit Project wants your account, in your own words.