Yes We Can: Obama’s Election and the Sense of Inclusion and Job Satisfaction among Minority Federal Workers

Abstract

ABSTRACT The election of President Obama, the first African American president of the United States, was an historic and symbolically important event that may have influenced the workplace attitudes of minority federal workers, although this question has yet to be tested empirically. Using difference-in-differences analyses of data from the 2008 and 2010 Federal Employee Viewpoint Surveys, this study explores the influence of Obama’s election on minority employees’ sense of inclusion and job satisfaction in the Department of Education (DoEd) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the two federal agencies with the largest proportion of African American employees. The findings suggest that minority employees in the DoEd and HUD experienced a net increase in their sense of inclusion and job satisfaction after the presidential election. The effect size is small, however, and we found little evidence of an Obama effect across other federal agencies.