Gender, Race, Local Labor Markets and Occupational Devaluation

Abstract

Many studies find that the gender composition of an occupation influences the earnings of incumbents while failing to find parallel effects for race. We suggest that minority representation does not have the same impact on occupational earnings that gender does for several reasons. We explore whether gender and minority composition effects are evident in local labor markets. Data on the fifty largest occupations in one hundred metropolitan areas culled from the 1990 Census form the basis of our analysis. For incumbents in each occupation, we estimate an individual-level earnings equation with controls for education, age, hours and weeks worked and industry. The gender and race composition of an occupation in each metropolitan area are independent variables. We find that the area-specific gender composition of an occupation sometimes has the expected depressing effect on wages, supporting a local-labor market perspective, while a parallel finding for racial composition is rarely evident.