Evaluating the Impact of Industrial and Occupational Change on Black-White Unemployment Gaps in New York City and the United States

Abstract

This article examines the Black-white unemployment rate gap in the United States and New York City (NYC) since 2020. While the gap has narrowed nationally since 2022, it has widened in NYC. Changes in the availability of jobs by industry and occupation is a likely contributor to the gap, given pervasive industrial and occupational segregation by race. I use a nonlinear decomposition to evaluate the effects of industrial and occupational segregation on the gap, while controlling for other demographic (i.e., age, gender) and human capital (i.e., education, experience) characteristics that are central to economic debates on the causes of labor-market inequality. While industrial and occupational segregation make some of the largest contributions to the gap, these characteristics contribute a negligible amount to the overall gap.

JEL Classification: J6, J7, J15, R2

Keywords

unemployment labor discrimination racial discrimination inequality urban economics

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