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Research indicates that individuals of different races, ethnic backgrounds, and class origins tend to differ in their unemployment rates. We know less, however, about whether these differences result from the different groups’ unequal risks of entering or exiting unemployment, and even less about how economic fluctuations moderate the ethnoracial and class-origin gaps in the long term risks of transitioning into and out of unemployment. Using Rounds 1-17 of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 and event history models, the researchers who developed the paper show that non-Hispanic blacks (blacks) become more similar to non-Hispanic whites (whites) in the hazard of entering unemployment when the local unemployment rate rises, perhaps because jobs largely closed to the former are eliminated in a greater proportion during recessions. Nonetheless, blacks’ relatively slow pace of transitioning from unemployment to jobs decelerates further with economic downturns. By contrast, Hispanics’ paces of entering and exiting unemployment relative to non-Hispanic whites hardly change with local unemployment rates, even though unemployed Hispanics are generally more disadvantaged in their chances of finding jobs. With respect to class origin, the researchers show that the advantages in both unemployment entry and recovery for men with a postsecondary-educated parent diminish with economic deteriorations. Thus, although economic recessions have changed the existing disadvantages with regards to unemployment risk that certain ethnoracial and class-origin groups face, the changes are by no means universal for all disadvantaged groups.

Citation

Yu, W., Sun, S. (n.d.) Falling in and Getting Out of Unemployment: Ethnoracial and Class Differences across Business Cycles. Chief Evaluation Office, U.S. Department of Labor.

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This study was part of the Department of Labor Scholars Program, and was produced outside of CEO’s standard research development process.