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Racial discrimination in the U.S. labor market: Employment and wage differentials by skill

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  • Borowczyk-Martins, Daniel
  • Bradley, Jake
  • Tarasonis, Linas

Abstract

In the U.S. the average black worker has a lower employment rate and earns a lower wage compared to his white counterpart. Lang and Lehmann (2012) argue that black–white wage and employment gaps are smaller for high-skill workers. We show that a model combining employer taste-based discrimination, search frictions and skill complementarities can replicate these regularities, and estimate it using data from the U.S. manufacturing sector. We find that discrimination is quantitatively important to understand differences in wages and job finding rates across workers with low education levels, whereas skill differences are the main driver of those differences among workers with high education levels.

Suggested Citation

  • Borowczyk-Martins, Daniel & Bradley, Jake & Tarasonis, Linas, 2017. "Racial discrimination in the U.S. labor market: Employment and wage differentials by skill," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 106-127.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:labeco:v:49:y:2017:i:c:p:106-127
    DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2017.09.007
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    1. Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Labor Market: Employment and Wage Differentials by Skill
      by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog on 2014-05-28 18:29:47

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    2. Bruno Decreuse & Linas Tarasonis, 2016. "Statistical Discrimination in a Search Equilibrium Model: Racial Wage and Employment Disparities in the US," Working Papers halshs-01327961, HAL.
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    4. Bruno Decreuse & Linas Tarasonis, 2021. "Statistical Discrimination in a Search Equilibrium Model: Racial Wage and Employment Disparities in the US," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 143, pages 105-136.
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    8. Bustelo, Monserrat & Flabbi, Luca & Piras, Claudia & Tejada, Mauricio, 2019. "Female Labor Force Participation, Labor Market Dynamic and Growth in LAC," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 9420, Inter-American Development Bank.
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    11. Forsythe, Eliza & Wu, Jhih-Chian, 2021. "Explaining Demographic Heterogeneity in Cyclical Unemployment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
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    13. Almarina Gramozi & Theodore Palivos & Marios Zachariadis, 2023. "Measuring the welfare costs of racial discrimination in the labor market," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 61(2), pages 232-252, April.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Employment and wage gaps; Discrimination; Job search; Sorting;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing

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