The decline of male employment in low-income black neighborhoods, 1950–1990 (original) (raw)
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Skills Shifts and Black Male Joblessness in Major Urban Labor Markets over the 1980's
Social Science Research, 2000
This study employs Census and related government data bases to analyze the effects of skills shifts on black male joblessness over the 1980's. Adapting skills mismatch and racial typing models, the author formulates conceptual arguments in support of the expectation that skills shifts contributed to a decline in relative demand for black males in major metropolitan labor markets in the 1980's. Innovative direct measures of withinoccupation and compositional sources of skills change were developed and then applied to a series of OLS regression and decomposition analyses. Results indicated that skills shifts did have a uniquely negative impact on employment-to-population ratios for less educated black males. Further, deskilling in manual skills dimensions and upskilling in authority requirements within local labor markets decreased employment levels across all black male educational strata. In contrast to expectations, however, upskilling in substantive complexity had positive effects on black male employment-to-population ratios.
A longitudinal analysis of urban poverty: Blacks in U.S. metropolitan areas between 1970 and 1980
Social Science Research, 1992
The prior analysis. however, was estimated using only cross-sectional data. The present longitudinal analysis finds little support for Murray's arguments and strong support for Wilson's. Results show that structural characteristics of the urban labor market-namely the suburbanization of employment, the decline in manufacturing jobs, and the rise of low-wage services-act to reduce black male employment, increase the prevalence of female-headed families, and drive up black poverty rates; but changes in the generosity of welfare payments have little or no effect on these outcomes. Discrepancies between the cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses are reconciled by considering the likely effects of selective migration between metropolitan areas. 0 1992 Academic Press. Inc. Long after the initiation of Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty," researchers and public policy analysts continue to debate the causes of urban poverty. Programs designed during the 1960s and 1970s to alleviate income deprivation and inequality had mixed results. Although far fewer elderly are below the poverty line now than in 1960, the vacancies they left behind were filled by women and children (
What Went Wrong? The Erosion of Relative Earnings and Employment Among Young Black Men in the 1980s
The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1992
This paper shows a widening in black-white earnings and employment gaps among young men from the mid-l970s through the 1980s that differs among subgroups. Earnings gaps increased most among college graduates and in the midwest while gaps in employment-population rates grew most among high school dropouts. We attribute the differential widening to distinct shifts in demand for subgroups due to changes in industry and regional employment, the falling real minimum wage and deunionisation, the growth of the relative supply of black to white workers that was marked among college graduates, and to increased crime, that was marked among high school dropouts. The differential factors affecting the groups highlights the economic diversity of black Americans.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 1999
Since the early 1970s, two dramatic changes in America's inner cities have dominated the concerns of researchers (McGeary and Lynn, 1988; Lynn and McGeary, 1990; Danzinger and Weinberg, 1994). First is the large racial change in central cities, from the vast majority of residents being white in the 1940s to the majority of inhabitants being African-Americans or Latino-Americans (Taeuber and Taeuber, 1965; Massey and Denton, 1988). The change has brought with it inordinately high levels of segregation which have been maintained to such a level in some cities that Massey and Denton (1989) have labeled them hypersegregated areas. This development has been so dramatic that the segregation rates between African-Americans and whites and Latinos and whites is so high as to make inner cities virtually exclusively non-Latino, non-white areas (Massey and Denton, 1989). Second, the racial turnover has been accompanied by an increase in the number of people living in poverty in the inner cities (Farley and Allen, 1989; Bane and Jargowski, 1990; Oliver and Shapiro, 1995). Wilson (1987) was the first to call attention to a particular segment of African-Americans whom he maintained had become significantly more impoverished. He argued that American capital had responded to global economic pressures by reducing bluecollar production jobs and replacing them with high technology service jobs. Because African-Americans disproportionately occupied production jobs, the reduction of such jobs in large cities produced many persistently unemployed people. Furthermore, the highly skilled jobs that were growing were doing so in the suburbs. Inner-city residents had difficulty competing for such jobs because they lacked the technical skills and they lived far way. In brief, the situation had created a spatial and job-skill mismatch for African-American inner-city residents (Wilson, 1987; Kasarda, 1989; Wacquant and Wilson, 1989). Consequently, many African-Americans in the lower economic class became persistently poor, physically isolated and without hope (Wilson, 1987: 20-62). He labeled this segment of African-American society the 'underclass'-later he changed
Changes in the labor market for black Americans, 1948-72
Brookings Papers on Economic …, 1973
Changes i n t he Labor Market for Black Americans, 1948-72 THE ECONOMIC STATUS OF BLACK AMERICANS has changed greatly over the past two decades. In some aspects of market position-years of school completed, occupational attainment, and income-blacks have risen relative to whites. Other measures of economic status-employment, unemployment, and labor force participation-reveal marked black-white differences in annual and longer-run patterns of change. Some groups of black workers-women and college-trained men-experienced extraordinary economic advance compared to whites. While black-white differences have not disappeared, the convergence in economic position in the fifties and sixties suggests a virtual collapse in traditional discriminatory patterns in the labor market. This paper examines the secular and cyclical dimensions of changes in the market for black labor since World War II and seeks to determine the economic and social forces at work. It begins with a broad overview of market developments during this period, highlighting four critical dimensions of change: the secular improvement in the relative income and occupational position of blacks; the more rapid relative advance black women experienced compared with black men; the greater sensitivity, compared with whites, of employment and income of black men to short-* Jerome Culp did his usual excellent job as research assistant for this paper. I benefited from the comments of Zvi Griliches, Duran Bell, and members of the Brookings panel, among others. 67 68 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 1:1973 run changes in gross national product (GNP); and the decline in the labor force participation of prime-age black men. The paper then turns to changes in the ratios of income and employment of blacks to those of whites in more detailed categories, disaggregated by region, education, occupation, and age.' The differential importance of changes in incomes within given groups, shifts in employment across groups, and interactions in the overall advance of blacks are evaluated by "decomposition of change" calculations. The potential causes of the observed cyclical and secular developments are considered next in the context of the theory of discrimination initially developed by Becker.2 This theory directs attention to changes in discrimination that result from changes in its price or cost, which, in the period under study, stemmed from federal and related antidiscriminatory activities that penalized discriminators. Ensuing empirical analysis of the major postwar development, the relative improvement in black incomes and occupational attainment, focuses on the post-1964 role of governmental and related civil rights activity; on the occupational decisions of black workers in response to improved or existing economic opportunities; and on the characteristics of jobs and workers that led to different rates of advance in different labor markets. The Traditional Picture At the outset, it will be useful to review briefly the traditional picture of black-white differences in the labor market which emerged from a wide variety of studies extending through the 1960s.3 First, blacks had markedly lower incomes than whites, on average and within comparable occupational or educational groups.4 In 1959, for example, the median income of black 1. Reference to these ratios hereafter will be simplified; for example, the ratio of the income of black males to the income of white males will be termed the black-white income ratio for males.
1992
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Field Perspectives on the Causes of Low Employment Among Less Skilled Black Men
2011
This article presents findings from a unique survey that assessed explanations for low black male employment by questioning participants in a low skill labor market. Black men identified barriers to hiring-including felony convictions, drug testing, low skill levels, and bias-as major reasons for their non-employment. Employers believed black male applicants were less likely to have the desired interpersonal skills and work ethic, and that they were less likely to pass pre-employment drug tests.