Black Women Social Workers in the Great Depression: A Test of Sheltered Labor Market Theory

Abstract

Sheltered labor market theory proposes that, under favorable public-sector policies, members of an outcast minority group can find relief from discrimination by performing an occupation that delivers social welfare services to a co-ethnic clientele that the majority group seeks to avoid. The present study tests this proposition, examining black women’s employment in social work during the Great Depression. Regression analyses of census data support the theory, suggesting that black women had a sheltered labor market in the social work profession in the North, where official non-discrimination policies in New Deal job creation programs were more scrupulously enforced than in the South. In northern cities, black women’s employment in social work is positively associated with black–white residential segregation as well as with blacks’ employment in public emergency work projects (e.g., the WPA). Thus, consistent with sheltered labor market theory, a minority group’s representation in a social welfare delivery occupation is enhanced by both public-sector economic intervention and the minority’s social and spatial distance from the majority.