Past work has documented significant occupational segregation between Black and white workers in the U.S. labor force. Little work, however, has examined racial occupational segregation in recent years or by levels of education and then at the intersection of education and race. In this paper, we contribute to this literature by calculating a…

Between 1991 and 2016, employment among White, Black, and Latino workers grew by 20 percent, while employment in good jobs soared by 35 percent. Yet the opportunities and benefits of the modern economy have not accrued evenly across the three groups. Discrimination and a history of racial injustice in this country have led to Whites gaining a…

This is the executive summary for the report, "The Unequal Race for Good Jobs: How Whites Made Outsized Gains in Education and Good Jobs Compared to Blacks and Latinos." Between 1991 and 2016, White workers built on their past educational and economic privileges to attain bachelor's and graduate degrees in historically high numbers and…

This report analyzed five databases to get a full picture of the different aspects and traits of Latinos in the workforce: (1) the Current Population Survey (CPS); (2) The American Community Survey (ACS); (3) the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS); (4) the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS); and (5) the…

This executive summary highlights findings presented in the full report, "Latino Education and Economic Progress: Running Faster but Still Behind." The report reveals that Latinos have a long way to go in achieving educational and economic equality. Latinos' rates of high school graduation are improving, but they are still last compared…

Across the massive megalopolis stretching from the northern suburbs of Los Angeles County through the metropolitan complex along the northern border of Baja California is a diverse area containing 24 million people, with a disproportionate percentage of Latinos and African Americans who are facing an educational and economic disaster. As it…

Analysis of North Carolina survey data indicates that females' average hourly wages were 71% of males', and blacks' wages were 78% of whites'. Human capital factors (educational attainment and occupational experience) explained 31% and 3% of the racial and gender gaps, respectively. Job gender composition explained 56% of the gender gap; job…

Patterns of employment in U.S. industry today were studied in order to explore factors behind the low income and lagging occupational status of black women workers. The data collected for this group were contrasted with similar data for white women workers. The study found (1) substantial underrepresention in hiring black women at all income…

We examine gender wage disparities for four groups of college-educated women--black, Hispanic, Asian, and non-Hispanic white--using the National Survey of College Graduates. Raw log wage gaps, relative to non-Hispanic white male counterparts, generally exceed -0.30. Estimated gaps decline to between -0.08 and -0.19 in nonparametric analyses that…

To examine the impact of rising wage inequality on lifetime wage growth, a study compared the wage mobility experienced by two cohorts of young white men from the National Longitudinal Surveys. The original cohort entered the labor market in the mid-1960s at the end of the economic boom and was followed through the end of the 1970s. The recent…

This paper develops and tests a theory, referred to as "preference for whiteness," which predicts that the interracial (white-black) and intraracial wage gap widens as the skin shade of the black worker darkens. Using data drawn from the Multi City Study of Urban Inequality and the National Survey of Black Americans, we report evidence…

Data from black and white women ages 34-44 (1968-88) showed that differences in characteristics did not explain occupational segregation by race nor the racial wage gap. During the 1980s, the gap was influenced by widening differences in access to occupations and an increase in returns to education. (SK)

Estimation of multinomial logistic regression models on a sample of unemployed workers suggested that persistently higher black unemployment is due to differential access to employment opportunities by region, occupational placement, labor market segmentation, and discrimination. The racial gap in unemployment is greatest for college-educated…

A contextual analysis of individual labor earnings as a function of both background/investment variables and specific dimensions of areal labor market social and economic organization suggests specific factors which influence Black and White earning levels. (Author/EB)

Two contrasting trends concerning gender and racial wage levels for U.S. workers emerged in the 1980s. The first trend, which is gender-related, is that women made tremendous gains in their wages relative to those of men: in 1978 women earned 61 percent as much as men, while by 1990 that figure rose to 72 percent. Furthermore, these gains extended…