Abstract
The persistent relationship between race and unemployment among young men and women has been among the most vexing problems faced by Black communities in the Post-Civil Rights era. Researchers have tried to identify mechanisms through which racial status continues to bear on employment status by identifying individual attributes that render workers of different racial identities similarly likely to secure employment. When Black and White workers with similar human capital profiles have different odds of employment, we are left to speculate about what is behind those differences. In this paper, I demonstrate that racial differences in the odds of unemployment are greater in some states than in others and suggest that some part of the racial employment gap can be explained by state-level attributes. First, however, we must identify convincing measures of the strength of association between race and employment status across states. I offer four such measures and rank the states on each. We are left with some surprising answers to the question “where does race matter most?” and empirical foundations for a research agenda that sheds new light on racial employment gaps by treating labor markets rather than labor market participants as the units of observation.
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Notes
This paper treats states and labor markets as contexts in which job opportunities are allocated more or less equitably. Therefore, those three terms—states, labor markets, and contexts—are used interchangeably throughout the paper.
In this paper, the odds of unemployment will be estimated and compared rather than the odds of employment; the results are the same but are better described as measures of Black disadvantage whereas Cohn and Fossett’s (1995) results are better described as estimates of White advantage.
Idaho, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming are excluded from the analyses of Black disadvantage because their samples contain fewer than 100 Black workers.
White, Black, American Indian, Latino, Asian, Southeast Asian/Pacific Islander, Arab/Middle Eastern, and “Other”.
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Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Dr. Elizabeth Hirsh and Dr. Catherine Berheide for their close readings and thoughtful commentaries on early drafts of this paper as well as Rebecca Datus, Taylor Sczymecki, and Mollie Welch for their assistance at the various stages of data gathering and reporting associated with this project. I am solely responsible for any shortcomings of the work.
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Emeka, A. Where Race Matters Most: Measuring the Strength of Association Between Race and Unemployment Across the 50 United States. Soc Indic Res 136, 557–573 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-017-1557-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-017-1557-9