Study - Racism in US Workforce

Race, not space, key to lower black male employment rate

Economists shed light on low-skilled workers’ black-white
employment gap

Irvine, Calif., June
19, 2007

A new study finds that in areas where low-skilled jobs are predominantly held
by whites, black men who live nearby are less likely to get hired.

“The problem is not lack of jobs at appropriate skill levels where blacks
live, but lack of jobs available to blacks,” said UC Irvine economist David
Neumark, co-author of the study.

For years, it’s been widely accepted that space is a primary barrier to
employment – meaning there are not enough low-skilled jobs where less-skilled
black workers live. But by analyzing the employment, education level and
location of more than 533,000 black males across the United States, Neumark and
his colleagues found that the issue is not simply whether jobs are available
nearby, but whether they are available to one’s own race.

“It’s an exaggeration to say blacks don’t live where the jobs are,” said
Neumark. “In reality, there are many jobs held by non-blacks in areas where
blacks live – including at lower education levels.”

And the greater the proportion of those jobs that are held by whites, the
lower the chance the local blacks will get hired into those jobs.

“The jobs simply are not available to their race,” Neumark added.

The study does not answer the question of why this happens, but the
researchers suggest discrimination or lack of labor market networks are likely
causes.

Jobs for low-skilled workers are often advertised informally through word of
mouth in social networks, such as among friends or church members, Neumark
explained. In many communities, this means that blacks may not have good
information about job openings in businesses employing mainly whites.

Neumark and his colleagues call this effect “racial mismatch,” a new spin on
the term “spatial mismatch,” which has been used to describe the lack of the
right jobs in the right place.

Recently, programs like “Wheels to Work” and “Moving to Opportunity” have
emphasized getting the workforce to the appropriate jobs by providing
transportation or relocation. But when Neumark and his colleagues ran a
simulation based on their data, they found that eliminating location differences
between blacks and whites would only close the racial employment gap for
low-skilled individuals by 10 to 15 percent.

“That’s not a significant improvement in employment,” Neumark said. “Policies
focused on getting people to the jobs miss the bigger barriers facing
low-skilled blacks.”

The study, co-authored by Judith Hellerstein and Melissa McInerney of the
University of Maryland, is available this month as part of the National Bureau
of Economic Research’s working paper series. Their research was funded by a
grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the
Russell Sage Foundation.

To access the paper, go to http://papers.nber.org/papers/w13161.