IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/labeco/v49y2017icp106-127.html

Racial discrimination in the U.S. labor market: Employment and wage differentials by skill

Author

Listed:
  • Borowczyk-Martins, Daniel
  • Bradley, Jake
  • Tarasonis, Linas

Abstract

In the U.S. the average black worker has a lower employment rate and earns a lower wage compared to his white counterpart. Lang and Lehmann (2012) argue that black–white wage and employment gaps are smaller for high-skill workers. We show that a model combining employer taste-based discrimination, search frictions and skill complementarities can replicate these regularities, and estimate it using data from the U.S. manufacturing sector. We find that discrimination is quantitatively important to understand differences in wages and job finding rates across workers with low education levels, whereas skill differences are the main driver of those differences among workers with high education levels.

Suggested Citation

  • Borowczyk-Martins, Daniel & Bradley, Jake & Tarasonis, Linas, 2017. "Racial discrimination in the U.S. labor market: Employment and wage differentials by skill," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 106-127.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:labeco:v:49:y:2017:i:c:p:106-127
    DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2017.09.007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092753711730307X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.labeco.2017.09.007?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Labor Market: Employment and Wage Differentials by Skill
      by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog on 2014-05-28 18:29:47

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bobba, Matteo & Flabbi, Luca & Levy, Santiago & Tejada, Mauricio, 2021. "Labor market search, informality, and on-the-job human capital accumulation," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 223(2), pages 433-453.
    2. Matteo Bobba & Luca Flabbi & Santiago Levy, 2022. "Labor Market Search, Informality, And Schooling Investments," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 63(1), pages 211-259, February.
    3. Bruno Decreuse & Linas Tarasonis, 2016. "Statistical Discrimination in a Search Equilibrium Model: Racial Wage and Employment Disparities in the US," Working Papers halshs-01327961, HAL.
    4. Kuhelika De & Ryan A. Compton & Daniel C. Giedeman & Gary A. Hoover, 2021. "Macroeconomic shocks and racial labor market differences," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 88(2), pages 680-704, October.
    5. Almarina Gramozi & Theodore Palivos & Marios Zachariadis, 2023. "Measuring the welfare costs of racial discrimination in the labor market," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 61(2), pages 232-252, April.
    6. Kuhelika De & Ryan A. Compton & Daniel C. Giedeman & Gary A. Hoover, 2019. "Macroeconomic Shocks and Racial Labour Market Differences in the U.S," CESifo Working Paper Series 8004, CESifo.
    7. Jacques Melitz & Farid Toubal, 2018. "Somatic Distance, Cultural Affinities, Trust and Trade," CESifo Working Paper Series 7051, CESifo.
    8. Thanh-Tam Nguyen-Huu, 2021. "Do “inferior” jobs always suffer from a wage penalty? Evidence from temporary workers in Cambodia and Pakistan," Post-Print hal-04248181, HAL.
    9. Jacques Melitz & Farid Toubal, 2019. "Somatic distance, trust and trade," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 786-802, August.
    10. Moradi, Pegah, 2019. "Race, Ethnicity, and the Future of Work," SocArXiv e37cu, Center for Open Science.
    11. Bruno Decreuse & Linas Tarasonis, 2021. "Statistical Discrimination in a Search Equilibrium Model: Racial Wage and Employment Disparities in the US," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 143, pages 105-136.
    12. Bustelo, Monserrat & Flabbi, Luca & Piras, Claudia & Tejada, Mauricio, 2019. "Female Labor Force Participation, Labor Market Dynamic and Growth in LAC," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 9420, Inter-American Development Bank.
    13. Korkmaz, Aslihan Gizem & Ucar, Erdem, 2024. "Female talent and corporate social performance," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    14. Scott David WILLIAMS, 2020. "A Textual Analysis Of Racial Considerations In Human Resource Analytics Vendors’ Marketing," Management Research and Practice, Research Centre in Public Administration and Public Services, Bucharest, Romania, vol. 12(4), pages 49-63, December.
    15. Almarina Gramozi & Theodore Palivos & Marios Zachariadis, 2020. "On the Degree and Consequences of Talent Misallocation for the United States," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 09-2020, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    16. Christian E. Weller & Connor Maxwell & Danyelle Solomon, 2021. "Simulating How Large Policy Proposals Affect the Black-White Wealth Gap," Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy, Springer, vol. 4(3), pages 196-213, September.
    17. Forsythe, Eliza & Wu, Jhih-Chian, 2021. "Explaining Demographic Heterogeneity in Cyclical Unemployment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    18. Charles Bellemare & Ibrahima Sory Aissatou Diallo & Marion Goussé, 2025. "Disability, discrimination, and the effectiveness of wage subsidies: A job-search approach," CIRANO Working Papers 2025s-04, CIRANO.
    19. Claudia Williamson Kramer, 2023. "Individualism and racial tolerance," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 197(3), pages 347-370, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:labeco:v:49:y:2017:i:c:p:106-127. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/labeco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.