Return to the Homeland? The Impact of the Great Recession on Employment Outcomes and Labor Mobility for Native Americans

Abstract

We chart the impact of the Great Recession on the employment outcomes of Native Americans, in and outside of their traditional homelands. While increases in unemployment during the Great Recession for Native Americans are comparable to African Americans, employment changes are not. It appears that this difference is the result of Native Americans moving to traditional homelands and withdrawing from the labor force. Net of this move to traditional homelands, the employment response in reservations to the Great Recession was muted relative to outside of homelands. To further investigate this phenomenon, we develop actual versus predicted employment rates based on the occupational and industrial structure of employment, differentiating Native Americans by whether they live in a traditional homeland.

A Decomposition of Economic Vulnerability Among Indigenous and Non‐Indigenous Adults in Canada

“…Given that we only observe First Nations adults who live off reserve, it is possible that our results possess an attenuation bias. In particular, Feir and Gillezeau (2018) find compelling evidence that Indigenous adults who lost their job during the Great Recession (i.e., the time during which we observe the second cohort) "returned to their traditional homelands in substantial numbers" (p. 71). Further, Cooke and Blanger (2006) suggest that First Nations communities have experienced significant out-migration as working-age adults seek economic opportunity elsewhere.…”

Why the Navajo Nation was hit so hard by coronavirus: Understanding the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic

“…A qualitative comparative analysis of Navajo history by Lerma (2014) suggests that between the first contact and 1923, the impact of colonial strategies on the elimination of traditional Diné institutions was minimal. Feir and Gillezeau (2018) 's study of unemployment of Native Americans during the Great Recession also suggests that relying on peoplehood is an important social trait of the Navajo people. Language is a good example to contextualize the importance of peoplehood for Navajo.…”

Distributional Differences and the Native American Gender Wage Gap

“…Scholarship examining racial inequalities that includes AIANs has largely taken three different approaches: limit analysis based upon race and ethnicity to those who select only AIAN (Akee et al 2017;Greenman and Xie 2008;Feir and Gillezeau 2018;Leichencko 2003); concentrate on location and examine only those living in reservation areas (Akee and Taylor 2014;Kimmel 1997;Mauer 2017) or focus on the effects of identifying as a member of a marginalized group and expand analysis to include those who identify in combination with another racial group (Burnette 2017;Davis et al 2016). Recently, some studies have begun to apply an inclusive approach yet still distinguish between AIAN populations by reporting results separately for different self-identified AIAN groups (Huyser et al 2010(Huyser et al , 2014Wise et al 2017).…”