A new report from Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce details the persistent educational and economic disparities between Whites, African-Americans and Latinos.
“The Unequal Race for Good Jobs: How Whites Made Outsized Gains in Education and Good Jobs Compared to Blacks and Latinos” offers a blunt commentary on persistent inequality along with a challenge to policy makers to create the change necessary to close these widening gaps.
About four years ago, the report’s authors set out to explore questions about what a good job is, how many there are and who has those good jobs. This is the fourth study published exploring the subject.
In the study, a good job is defined as work that pays a minimum of $35,000 annually to workers between the ages of 25 and 44 and at least $45,000 to workers between the ages of 45 and 64. In 2016, overall median earnings for all good jobs was about $65,000. The majority of the data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey, 1992–2017. Additional data comes from the Panel Survey on Income Dynamics and the National Longitudinal Surveys.
“Since the early 1990s, there has been a growth in good jobs,” said Dr. Anthony P. Carnevale, one of the authors of the report. “They have shifted dramatically from manufacturing into the service sector.”
Between 1991 and 2016, greater access to higher education enabled White workers to have greater access to good jobs that required a bachelor’s degree or higher. While Black and Latino workers also attained higher education, their gains have been far less than their White counterparts.
Comparing 1991 to 2016, the number of White workers with jobs requiring a high school diploma or less decreased from 45 percent to 27 percent. Middle skills jobs remained about the same. Jobs that required a bachelor’s degree or higher grew from 29 percent to 44 percent. Examining Black workers over the same time period, there were also significant changes, but just 30 percent of Black workers attained good jobs that required a bachelor’s degree or higher. Only 20 percent of Latinos had those jobs. The largest number of Latino workers are still in jobs that require a high school diploma or less.
