Black male unemployment

Review of Black Political Economy

Volumn 25, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 77-93

  Schwartzman, David ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0009965620     PISSN: 00346446     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s12114-997-1004-2     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. Employment and Earnings, January 1997, 160, 162;
2. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Handbook of Labor Statistics 1975 - Reference Edition, Bulletin 1865, 146, Table 60.
3. Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: Free Press, 1994);
4. Andrew Hacker, Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal (New York: Scribners, 1992);
5. Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
6. Data on employment and unemployment after 1959 by occupations were obtained from Employment and Earnings, January issues.
7. Data for 1950 to 1959 were taken from Manpower Report of the President, April 1967. The data for the 1950s were for members of the labor force 14 years and over. For later decades, they were for those 16 years and over. Unemployment rates were estimated by dividing the number of unemployed in each occupational group by the sum of the number employed and the number unemployed. The following occupations were classified as skilled: professionals, managers, salesworkers, clerical workers, and craftworkers. Other occupations were classified as unskilled, including operatives, laborers, service workers, and farm workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics changed the occupational classification in 1983. To make the data for 1983 and later years consistent with those for earlier years, they were linked at 1982, for which the BLS supplied data under both classifications.
8. Based on Employment and Earnings, January 1997, 169, 194.
9. The OECD Jobs Study: Facts, Analysis, Strategies (Paris, France: OECD, 1994) concludes on the basis of the ratio of unskilled to skilled unemployment that there has been no change in the relative demand for unskilled labor. Table 1 indicates that the ratio in 1950-59 was 2.1. The ratios for the succeeding decades - 2.1, 2.0, 2.2, and 2.0 - are sufficiently close to the first ratio that one might conclude using this criterion that the relative demand has not changed. However, the same fall in the percentage employed in both groups would have reduced the ratio of the unskilled unemployment rate to the skilled unemployment rate. This follows from the fact that a higher percentage of the skilled labor force was employed at the beginning of the period.
10. Robert Topel, "What Have We Learned from Empirical Studies of Unemployment and Turnover?" American Economic Review, 83 (May 1993):111, 114.
11. Chinhui Juhn, Kevin M. Murphy, and Brooks Pierce, "Wage Inequality and the Rise of Returns to Skill," Journal of Political Economy, 101 (June 1993): 410-11.
12. See table below, which indicates decade average annual growth, rates of money, real GDP, and Prices, for 1950-1990 and for 1990-1995. (1) (2) (3) (4) Money GDP Prices (1)-(2) 1950-60 3.5 3.2 2.5 0.3 1960-70 7.0 4.0 2.7 2.9 1970-80 9.5 3.1 6.8 6.4 1980-90 7.2 2.9 4.4 4.4 1950-90 6.8 3.3 4.1 3.5 1990-95 2.4 1.9 2.8 0.5 Notes: Money is M2. Price index is GDP implicit deflator. Source: Rates of growth calculated from estimates in ERP various years. In each of the three decades following 1960 the average annual rate of inflation (col. 3) was equal or close to the difference between the average growth rates of M2 and constant-dollar GDP. The bank balances left over from the preceding decade resulted in a higher inflation rate in the decade 1950-1960 than expected on the basis of the difference between the rate of growth of M2 and of GDP. In the present decade the inflation rate exceeds the rate that would be expected from the growth of M2. The development of new monetary instruments may explain the divergence.
13. Daniel S. Hamermesh and James Grant, "Econometric Studies of Labor-Labor Substitution and Their Implications for Policy," Journal of Human Resources, 14, no. 4:537.
14. Sherwin Rosen, "Short-run Employment Variation on Class-1 Railroads in the United States, 1947-1962," Econometrica, 36 (1968): 511-29;
15. Zvi Griliches, "Capital-skill Complementarity," Review of Economics and Statistics, 51 (1969): 465-68.
16. Statistical Abstract of the United States 1992, 405;
17. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Handbook of Labor Statistics 1989, Bulletin 2340, 292.
18. Estimate based on David M. Blank and George J. Stigler, The Demand and Supply of Scientific Personnel (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1957), 25.
19. Claudia Goldin and Robert A. Margo, "The Great Compression: The Wage Structure in the United States at Mid-Century," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 107 (February 1992) no. 1:7.
20. Historical Statistics, Part 1, ser. K352, K705, K710, D802
21. According to Goldin and Margo, the ratio of weekly wages of college graduates with 11 to 15 years' experience to those of high school graduates with the same number of years' experience in 1940 was 1.777; in 1950 1.461; in 1960 1.565; in 1963 1.584; and in 1987 1.635. Goldin and Margo, "The Great Compression," 7.
22. Blackburn, Bloom, and Freeman estimate that among white males between 1980 and 1987 the ratio of earnings of operatives, handlers, laborers, and service workers to those of managers and professionals fell by 12 percent. In the 1980s the earnings of high school dropouts relative to those of college graduates fell by 16 percent, while the relative earnings of high school graduates fell by 11 percent. McKinley L. Blackburn, David E. Bloom, and Richard B. Freeman, "The Declining Economic Position of Less-Skilled American Men," in Gary Burtless (ed.), A Future of Lousy Jobs? The Changing Structure of U.S. Wages (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1990), 36.
23. Statistical Abstract of the United States 1984, 418, table 694.
24. Statistical Abstract of the United States 1984, 418, Ibid.
25. Eric A. Hanushek, "The Economics of Schooling: Production and Efficiency in Public Schools," Journal of Economic Literature, 14 (September 1986):1153.
26. Goldin and Margo, "The Great Compression," 24.
27. They cite Hugh Rockoff, Drastic Measures: A History of Wage and Price Controls in the United States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
28. Historical Statistics, Part 1, ser. K351, D802.
29. Gary S. Becker, Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 78.
30. Based on Historical Statistics, Part 1, ser. H720-22.
31. Based on Historical Statistics, Part 1, ser. H707.
32. Digest of Education Statistics 1995, 17, table 8.
33. Herbert G. Grubel, International Economics (Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin 1981), 173-76.
34. Statistical Abstract of the United States 1994, 828, table 1331.
35. Jeffrey D. Sachs and Howard J. Shatz, "Trade and Jobs in U.S. Manufacturing," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, I (1994): 17-20, 52.
36. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of International Labor Affairs, Trade-Sensitive U.S. Industries: Employment Trends and Worker Characteristics, Economic Discussion Paper 36, July 1991, 24, table B.1.
37. Edward R. Leamer, "Wage Effects of a U.S.-Mexican Trade Agreement," National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 3991, February 1992, 16-17.
38. U.S. Department of Labor, Trade-Sensitive U.S. Industries, 16, table 2.
39. Sachs and Shatz, "Trade and Jobs in U.S. Manufacturing," 17-20, 52.
40. Paul A. Samuelson and William D. Nordhaus, Economics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995,15th ed.) 537-38.
41. Robert Solow, "Technical Change and the Aggregate Production Function," Review of Economics and Statistics, 3 (1957): 312-20;
42. Edward F. Denison, The Sources of Economic Growth and the Alternatives Before Us (New York: Committee for Economic Development, 1962).
43. Jacob Schmookler, Invention and Economic Growth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966) 106, 206.
44. Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
45. David Schwartzman, Black Unemployment: Part of Unskilled Unemployment (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997), 133.
46. David T. Ellwood, Poor Support: Poverty in the American Family (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 19, 138.
47. Finis Welch, "The Employment of Black Men," Journal of Labor Economics, 8, no. 1, Part 2 (1990): 526-74.
48. Hourly earnings of manufacturing production workers in current dollars from Statistical Abstract of the United States 1992, 742, Table 1247. Deflated by CPI.
49. Kevin M. Murphy and Finis Welch, "The Structure of Wages," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 107 (February 1992): 285-86.
50. Schwartzman, Black Unemployment, 133.
51. Schwartzman, Black Unemployment, 133. Ibid.