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In the paper the researchers analyze if the share of agricultural employment can contribute to strengthening employment resilience in Indian Country. They define Indian Country as all reservation territories within the contiguous United States. They construct employment data by sector for Indian Country based on Zip Code level data from 1990 to 2015. They analyze employment growth in Indian Country across recessions and recovery periods and find Indian Country generally to be less affected by recessions than the United States as a whole. They operationalize resilience in two ways: lower variability of employment and speed of recovery. They find a larger share of agricultural employment to be associated with lower variability of employment, but also slower recovery.

Research Questions

• What is the role of agriculture in employment growth? The well documented increase in farms on reservations suggests that the two might be positively correlated.
• Does the share of agricultural labor influence the variability of employment growth?
• Do reservations with a larger share of agriculture show a lower decline in jobs during recessions?
• If agriculture slows the decline in job growth, do we see slower or faster recovery on reservations with higher shares of agriculture?

Citation

Gross, L., Moenius, J. (2017). University of Redlands. How Badly Are Native Americans Affected by Economic Recessions? The Role of Agriculture. 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.