Are African-Americans Losing Their Footholds in Better Jobs?

Abstract

The years from the early 1970s through the early 1990s were tough ones for most American workers. Unemployment rates rose above 6 percent of the civilian labor force during only two of the years between 1954 and 1974 but fell below 6 percent for only 4 of the 20 years between 1974 and 1994. From 1974 to 1993, real earnings stagnated, union density rates tumbled from 22 percent to 15 percent, and the real value of the minimum wage fell 25 percent from its peak [Mishel and Bernstein 1994]. Wage inequality grew, and earnings at the bottom fell far below those in Europe and Japan [Freeman 1994]. Contingent work arrangements spread, and fewer workers obtained benefits at every level of the job market [Gittleman and Howell 1995]. Opportunities appeared to be extremely limited for those with less than a college education, especially for the young. Slack labor markets in the past have yielded evidence of bumping, of one group sliding down an employment queue to displace a less-favored group below it. Examples from the Great Depression include those of white men moving into what had been black men's jobs [Sundstrom 1992], white women moving into jobs that had been held by black women, and men filling women's professions [Kessler-Harris 1982]. After World War II, men claimed women's manufacturing jobs [Milkman 1987], and as Dorothy Sue Cobble [1991] reported, white women replaced black men in waiting positions. This paper attempts to establish whether or not black women and men were bumped during the 1970s and 1980s from labor market niches they attained during