Where Race Matters Most: Measuring the Strength of Association Between Race and Unemployment Across the 50 United States

The persistent relationship between race and unemployment among young men and women has been among the most vexing problems faced by Black communities in the Post-Civil Rights era. Researchers have tried to identify mechanisms through which racial status continues to bear on employment status by identifying individual attributes that render workers of different racial identities similarly likely to secure employment. When Black and White workers with similar human capital profiles have different odds of employment, we are left to speculate about what is behind those differences. In this paper, I demonstrate that racial differences in the odds of unemployment are greater in some states than in others and suggest that some part of the racial employment gap can be explained by state-level attributes. First, however, we must identify convincing measures of the strength of association between race and employment status across states. I offer four such measures and rank the states on each. We are left with some surprising answers to the question “where does race matter most?” and empirical foundations for a research agenda that sheds new light on racial employment gaps by treating labor markets rather than labor market participants as the units of observation.