This week, CNN Money published an impressive series of profiles of transgender people struggling to find work in America. Some are unemployed, others homeless or in debt. 

In the opening article, Blake Ellis writes:

It’s hard to pin down a precise jobless rate since there’s so little transgender-specific data available. The most recent comprehensive study of more than 6,000 transgender individuals wasreleased in 2011 by the National Center for Transgender Equality. This report found the transgender jobless rate to be 14% — double the national rate — and as high as 28% for black respondents. And a recent online Prudential survey of 49 transgender individuals had similar findings.

The six profiles that follow are written as first-person narratives, with each person telling their own version of a universally heartbreaking, fundamentally unfair story. Writes Keisha Allen, a trans woman from Chicago:

I’ve interviewed for over 100 jobs — entry-level jobs like a server, cook, dishwasher, cashier — no jobs that require a school background. I’m lucky to get to the interview, and once I get to the interview and my name doesn’t match my ID and my body doesn’t match what it says on my ID, I never hear back. And I believe it’s because I’m a woman of color and a transgender woman of color.

Read through the series. The stories are compelling, and it’s kind of a big deal that CNN took the initiative to cover this issue.