Black Men Concentrated in Low-Paying Jobs Regardless of Education

by Frederick H. Lowe
Labor-market segregation consigns black men to low–wage jobs despite their educational achievements and their abilities to interact successfully with customers, according to an Economic Policy Institute Briefing Paper.

“Black men are overrepresented in low-wage jobs and underrepresented in high-wage jobs,” write authors Darrick Hamilton, Algernon Austin and William Darity Jr., in the paper, “Whiter Jobs and Higher Wages: Occupational Segregation and the Lower Wages of Black Men."

“Neither hard skills, soft skills, nor black men’s occupational interests provide convincing explanations for black male sorting in low-wage occupations,” the paper added.

Austin is director of the Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy Program at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank concerned with achieving a fair, prosperous economy. Hamilton is an associate professor at Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy, an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Economics at The New School for Social Research. He is co-author of "Occupational Segregation and Lower Wages of Black Men." Darity is a professor of African and African-American Studies and Economics  at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy.

In 2008, the year Barack Obama was elected the nation's first African-American president, black men earned only 71 percent of what white men earned. The briefing paper also noted that after educational attainment is taken into account, 87 percent of U.S. occupations can be classified as racially segregated and that occupations with smaller numbers of black-male employees have higher wages.

“The average of the annual wages of occupations in which black men are overrepresented is $37,005, compared with $50,333 in occupations in which they are underrepresented,” wrote the authors. They added that a $10,000 increase in average annual wage of an occupation is associated with a 7 percent drop in the proportion of the black men in that profession.

Educational achievement does not explain wage disparities between black men and white men, the study found.
“Among workers with a high school diploma (or GED) or a bachelor's degree, black men earned only 74 percent of what white men earned,” the report said.

Economist Barbara Bergmann said black men earn much lower wages than white men because of “occupational crowding.”

Black workers are denied employment in more desirable high-wage jobs and are crowded into less-desirable low-wage occupations.  The result is an oversupply of workers in the crowded occupations, which has an effect of lowering wages further in those jobs, Bergmann said.

The authors based their conclusions on data developed from a 2005 to 2007 American Community Survey. The survey explored the hypothesis of occupational overcrowding. The U.S. Census Bureau conducts the American Community Survey, which is an annual poll.

Employers refuse to hire black workers in desirable jobs because of their distaste for associating with African Americans, misperceptions concerning the productivity of black workers and a fear of negative reactions from customers or from current nonblack employees if black workers are hired, Bergmann said.

The Economic Policy Institute study reported that 54 percent of management, professional and related occupations have an underrepresentation of black men.

“In the management and professional occupations, those jobs with an underrepresentation of black men have annual wages nearly $20,000 higher than the ones with overrepresentation of black men ($68,684 versus $49,904),” the report said.

On the other hand, black men are overrepresented in most service occupations, which offer low pay.  
“Across all occupations, the average occupational wage is $44,719, while the average occupational wage across all service occupations is considerably lower at $28,962,” the report said.