Employment and Wage Prospects of Black, White, and Hispanic Women: Evidence from the 1980s and Early 1990s

Since the mid-1970s, the U.S. experienced substantial changes in the industrial composition of employment and wages owing to energy price shocks, increased international competition, and technological change (Hyclak, 1996, Levy and Murnane, 1992). As the share of total manufacturing employment declined and service employment expanded in both absolute and relative terms, wage inequality increased, particularly between college and high school educated workers (Katz and Murphy, 1992; Danziger and Gottschalk, 1993; Rasell, Bluestone and Mishel, 1997). Furthermore, changes in the legal and institutional structure of U.S. labor markets, including a decline in the share of the labor force that is unionized and changes in the enforcement of affirmative action laws, constrained employment options for unskilled and semi-skilled workers (Freeman, 1993). There is growing evidence that the consequences of these macro-economic trends were not uniform among race/ethnic and age groups (Hotz, et. al., 1995; Bound and Freeman, 1992; Acs and Danziger, 1993; Blau and Kahn, 1997). For example, real wages declined more steeply for younger that older workers (Katz and Murphy, 1992; Bound and Johnson, 1992). Reversing a long-run trend, the black-white differentials in employment rates and market earnings widene