Just Who Loses?: Discrimination in the United States, Volume 2

6. Opportunity to Work and Discrimination

6 Opportunity to Work and Discrimination M aterial well-being has several dimensions. Opportunity to work is key to all of them. Years of training for an occupation would have little material or perhaps even emotional payoff were there no work opportunities afterward. The vast majority of adults would have no income, or grossly insufficient income, were it not for their earnings from wage labor. And finally, partaking in the meaning of work requires engagement in work. Hence, time at work, its steadiness, its extensiveness, are important dimensions of labor force activity. These observations merely hint at the easily recognized importance of work. Many factors may serve to allocate opportunity to work. Discrimination is one such potential factor. Clear instances of employment discrimination mar the historical record. For example, during World War II opportunities in the paid labor force were extended to women . However, once the perceived crisis of labor supply had passed, women ’s work opportunities were curtailed; women were fired from their industrial jobs and relegated to less financially rewarding sectors or unpaid labor (e.g., Anderson 1981, 161–176). Similarly, during the early part of the twentieth century, blacks were often not hired during periods of labor calm, only to be deployed as strikebreakers when capitalists deemed black employment useful to hinder whites’ efforts to increase whites’ wages (e.g., Bonacich 1976). These historical examples make clear that the opportunity to work may be caused, in part, by discrimination. Opportunity to Work and Discrimination / 175 Setting the Context: Work Opportunity in the Mid- to Late-Twentieth-Century United States The findings to follow must be considered in light of four major transformations of the U.S. labor market and opportunity to work during the midto late-twentieth century. First, the move from agriculture to manufacturing accelerated during the decades under consideration, greatly altering the meaning of paid labor force participation. Second, white-collar-dominated sectors, such as finance and public administration, grew as well over the century, first at the expense of agriculture, then later at the expense of manufacturing. Third, the rapid rise of the paid labor force participation of white married women greatly expanded the pool of available workers. Fourth, the spatial distribution of jobs changed throughout the period, altering the character and availability of work. These changes had profound implications for the opportunity to work and the cost of nonwork. The decline of agriculture reduced work opportunities for rural residents, pushing many toward urbanized areas. The move to the city altered the pace and availability of work in complex ways. Still, early in the period under study, owing to the low amount of education needed for manufacturing jobs, rural folk could obtain relatively secure, relatively highly paid manufacturing positions once they arrived in the city, especially as many manufacturing jobs required little formal education or even on-the-job training (Bailer 1943). The decline of manufacturing entailed a decline in the availability of these low-skill, high-pay, high-security jobs. Further, owing to industrial contraction and relocation, the concentration of such jobs moved from urban to suburban and exurban areas, depleting the employment opportunities for and even the community amenities of urban dwellers (e.g., Kasarda 1972; Mair, Florida, and Kenney 1988). These changes occurred in concert with the changing employment fortunes of different demographic groups. Analysts have noted that black male unemployment rates exceeded white male unemployment rates in the late twentieth century (e.g., Bonacich 1976). Indeed, over the century the ratio of black to white unemployment increased (e.g., Fairlie and Sundstrom 1999). However, before 1940, apparently the ratio favored blacks (C. Killingsworth 1968; Bonacich 1976). At the same time, black women’s labor force participation exceeded white women’s labor force participation throughout the twentieth century (e.g., Goldin 1977; Toossi 2004). And married women’s labor force participation lagged behind the labor force participation rate of men (Goldin 1990). The rate of paid labor force participation by single white females appears constant (Goldin 1990). Hence, white married women joined black women and single white women in the paid labor force, possibly increasing the competition for some jobs, especially after marriage bars—formal policies governments and firms adopted between 1900 and 1950 that called 176 / Chapter 6 for firing women once they married and/or rejecting married women applicants —were removed in the 1950s (Goldin 1988). Thus, over the twentieth century the value of steady work rose...