Abstract
This article finds that African American and Latino workers have borne a disproportionate share of employment costs associated with defense cuts in California’s aerospace industry. The data for this analysis come from administrative files, which contain demographic and employment-related information for everyone who collects unemployment-insurance benefits. The analysis shows that African Americans suffered higher displacement rates, longer unemployment spells, and poorer outcomes in new jobs than whites. Latinos were disadvantaged in several ways, but not consistently in all categories. Asian Americans, on the other hand, generally fared better than whites. These results show that economic dislocation, in the form of defense cuts, reinforces racial inequality in the labor market.
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Notes
For a general discussion on the employment impacts of defense cuts, see John Brauer and John Tepper Marlin, “Converting Resources from Military to Non-Military Uses,”Journal of Economic Perspectives 6(4)(Fall 1992):145–164.
Private correspondence from the UCLA Business Forecast Project (February 3, 1995).
Roger C. Williams, “An Estimate of Black Gross Job Losses Due to Reduced Defense Expenditure,”The Review of Black Political Economy, 22, 3(Winter 1994):31–41.
For a recent review of the literature see Lori Kletzer, “Differences in the Costs of Job Displacement by Race and Ethnicity: A Review of the Literature,” report to the South Coast Air Quality Management District (May 2, 1994).
See, for example, Don Mar and Paul M. Ong, “Race and Rehiring in the High-Tech Industry,”The Review of Black Political Economy, 22, 3(Winter 1994):43–54; and Paul M. Ong, “Race and Post-Displacement Earnings Among High-Tech Workers,”Industrial Relations, 30, 3 (Fall 1991): 456–468.
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Ong, P.M., Lawrence, J.R. Race and employment dislocation in California’s aerospace industry. The Review of Black Political Economy 23, 91–101 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02689993
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02689993