H as the growth of the American penal system over the past thirty years transformed the path to adulthood followed by disadvantaged minority men? Certainly the prison boom affected many young black men. The U.S. penal population increased six fold between 1972 and 2000, leaving 1.3 million men in state and federal prisons by the end of the century. By 2002, around 12 percent of black men in their twenties were in prison or jail (Harrison and Karberg 2003). High incarceration rates led researchers to claim that prison time had become a normal part of the early adulthood for black men in poor urban neighborhoods (Freeman 1996;Irwin and Austin 1997). In this period of mass imprisonment, it was argued, official criminality attached not just to individual offenders, but to whole social groups defined by their race, age, and class (Garland 2001a:2).Claims for the new ubiquity of imprisonment acquire added importance given recent research on the effects of incarceration. The persistent disadvantage of low-education African Americans is, however, usually linked not to the penal system but to large-scale social forces like urban deindustrialization, residential segregation, or wealth inequality (Wilson 1987; Massey and Denton 1993; Oliver and Shapiro 1997). However, evidence shows incarceration is closely associated with low wages, unemployment, family instability, recidivism, and restrictions on political and social rights (

Decades of racial progress have led some researchers and policymakers to doubt that discrimination remains an important cause of economic inequality. To study contemporary discrimination, we conducted a field experiment in the low-wage labor market of New York City, recruiting white, black, and Latino job applicants who were matched on demographic characteristics and interpersonal skills. These applicants were given equivalent résumés and sent to apply in tandem for hundreds of entry-level jobs. Our results show that black applicants were half as likely as equally qualified whites to receive a callback or job offer. In fact, black and Latino applicants with clean backgrounds fared no better than white applicants just released from prison. Additional qualitative evidence from our applicants' experiences further illustrates the multiple points at which employment trajectories can be deflected by various forms of racial bias. These results point to the subtle yet systematic forms of discrimination that continue to shape employment opportunities for low-wage workers.Despite legal bans on discrimination and the liberalization of racial attitudes since the 1960s, racial differences in employment remain among the most enduring forms of economic inequality. Even in the tight labor market of the late 1990s, unemployment rates for black men remained twice that for whites. Racial inequality in total joblessness-including those who exited the labor market-increased among young men during this period (Holzer and Offner 2001). Against this backdrop of persistent racial inequality, the question of employment discrimination has generated renewed interest. Although there is much research on racial disparities in employment, the contemporary relevance of discrimination remains widely contested.One line of research points to the persistence of prejudice and discrimination as a critical factor shaping contemporary racial disparities (Darity and Mason 1998;Roscigno et al. 2007). A series of studies relying on surveys and in-depth interviews finds that firms are reluctant to hire young minority men-especially blacks-because they are seen as unreliable, dishonest, or lacking in social or cognitive skills (Holzer 1996;Kirschenman and Neckerman 1991;Moss and Tilly 2001;Waldinger and Lichter 2003; Wilson 1996: chap. 5). The strong negative attitudes expressed by employers suggest that race remains highly salient in employers' evaluations of workers. At the same time, research relying on interviews with employers leaves uncertain the degree to which self-reported attitudes are influential in actual hiring decisions (Pager and Quillian 2005). Indeed, Moss and Tilly Direct all correspondence to Devah Pager, Department of Sociology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 pager@princeton.edu. Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptAm Sociol Rev. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2010 August 4. 2001:151) report the puzzling finding that "businesses where a plurality of managers ...

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Median income in the United States has fallen and the distribution of income has grown markedly more unequal over the past three decades, reversing a general pattern of earnings growth and equalization dating back to 1929. Median trends were not the same for all groups-women's earnings generally increased-but the growth in earnings inequality has been experienced by all groups. Even white men employed full-time, year-round-traditionally the most privileged and secure group-could not escape wage stagnation and polarization. These patterns suggest research questions that go beyond conventional sociological interest in racial and gender wage gaps, refocusing attention on more general changes in labor market dynamics. The debates over the origins of the rise in US inequality cover a wide range of issues that can be roughly grouped into four categories: the changing demographics of the labor force, the impact of economic restructuring, the role of political context and institutions, and the dynamics of globalization. We review the empirical literature here, and challenge the field of sociology to reconstruct its research agenda on stratification and inequality.

The historic increase in U.S. incarceration rates made the transition from prison to community common for poor, prime-age men and women. Leaving prison presents the challenge of social integration--of connecting with family and finding housing and a means of subsistence. The authors study variation in social integration in the first months after prison release with data from the Boston Reentry Study, a unique panel survey of 122 newly released prisoners. The data indicate severe material hardship immediately after incarceration. Over half of sample respondents were unemployed, two-thirds received public assistance, and many relied on female relatives for financial support and housing. Older respondents and those with histories of addiction and mental illness were the least socially integrated, with weak family ties, unstable housing, and low levels of employment. Qualitative interviews show that anxiety and feelings of isolation accompanied extreme material insecurity. Material insecurity combined with the adjustment to social life outside prison creates a stress of transition that burdens social relationships in high-incarceration communities.