Race and Loss of Privilege: African American/White Differences in the Determinants of Job Layoffs From Upper-Tier Occupations

Abstract

Data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics supports predictions from the minority vulnerability thesis concerning the determinants of job layoffs among African Americans and Whites who work in upper-middle-class occupations. Specifically, after controlling for seniority, layoffs for AfricanAmericans are relatively unstructured by traditional stratification-based causal factors, namely, background socioeconomic status, human-capital credentials, and job/labor market characteristics. Analyses also indicate that racial differences in the determinants of layoffs are more pronounced in nonservice-based than service-based firms in the private sector and in the private sector relative to the public sector.KEY WORDS: job layoffs; workplace; racial inequality.In the last decade and a half, a developing line of sociological research on racial stratification in the workplace has focused on African Americans and Whites who occupy relatively privileged positions in the American occupational structure (for reviews see Patillo-McCoy, 1999; Wilson et al., 1999). This research has shed light on the dynamics of inequality among a growing segment of the increasingly differentiated African American population. Sociologists have documented that in recent decades African Americans have increased their representation in upper-tier occupational categories-namely, those that include managers, executives,

African American Men and the Experience of Employment Discrimination

“…Such scholarship relates firing to employers' willingness to undertake discretionary and arguably discriminatory behavior especially when unemployment is high and fired workers can be easily replaced (in these regards, see especially Donohue and Siegelman 1991). The prevalence of discriminatory firing is also consistent with recent work suggesting that employer subjectivity and biases make minorities especially vulnerable to forced exits (McBrier and Wilson 2004;Wilson and McBrier 2005). Firing includes discharge, constructive discharge, layoffs, and involuntary retirement, as well as other employer acts which effectively encourage the employee to quit, such as suspensions or failure to recall.…”

“…In fact, as corporations experienced downsizing in the 1990s, African American white-collar workers were disproportionately displaced into lower-level white-collar and, particularly, blue-collar jobs, while whites benefited from traditional protective factors such as higher SES, professional or technical employment, union membership, and firm tenure (McBrier and Wilson 2004). This supports a "minority vulnerability thesis"-the flip side to the particularistic mobility argument-wherein downward mobility for minorities is more general, less circumscribed, and less predicted by traditional protective factors (see especially Wilson and McBrier 2005).…”

“…Drawing from case files, and using civil rights and EEOC criteria and case determinations specifically to restrict our sample, provides significant leverage and confidence that the processes described capture discrimination in its varied forms rather than just perceptions, self-reports, or second-hand accounts. We also see this as a particularly important extension and contribution to much prior work-prior work that has, through rigorous quantitative analyses, denoted persistent racial gaps and that often attributes residuals to discrimination (e.g., Huffman and Cohen 2004;Reid and Padavic 2005;Tomaskovic-Devey et al 2005;Wilson and McBrier 2005).…”

Discrimination across the Sectors: A Comparison of Discrimination Trends in Private and Public Organizations

“…Although very few studies exist comparing actual discrimination patterns between the sectors (e.g., Hoffnar & Greene, 1996;Long, 1975;Wilson & McBrier, 2005), many studies have investigated discrimination trends within each sector, with the vast majority of these studies focusing on the public sector.…”

College as an Investment: The Role of Graduation Rates in Changing Occupational Inequality by Race, Ethnicity, and Gender

“…Other work has found that the relationship between educational attainment and layoffs varies by race (Wilson and McBrier 2005). 3 The little research available on higher education suggests that a postgraduate degree insulates white women in white collar occupations from downward mobility more than American or Hispanic women (Wilson 2009).…”