| Why does racial, ethnic, and gender inequality persist even under the best economic environments? More specifically, do employers have informal rankings of different racial and ethnic groups, when they are recruiting for a job that does not require college education? If they do, does the racial and ethnic hierarchy affect their hiring decision? And, what are determinants of employers' hiring decisions, when they are recruiting new low-skilled workers? Given the estimated effects of various factors, can we attribute the difficulties of native-born low-skilled workers, especially African American males, to immigrants? These are the research questions addressed in the dissertation. The dissertation uses a 1997 employer survey conducted in four major metropolitan areas: Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and Atlanta. These firms are included in the survey mainly because they recently hired someone for a job that does not require college education.;The results show that employers tend to rank Asians as the best and the African Americans as the worst workers. Latinos, whites, and immigrants are ranked somewhere in the middle. The rankings of racial and ethnic groups are consistent across regions and contexts. But controlling for characteristics of previous workers, group diversity of the firm, and various measures of institutional characteristics of human resource practices, employers' group preferences do not have significant effects on their hiring decisions. Job applicants who are members of the dominant group in a firm are more likely to be recruited. And, who used to do the job is a good predictor of who will be hired for the job. Job turnovers across racial, ethnic, and gender groups are significantly low, indicating that the labor markets in these regions are profoundly fragmented along racial, ethnic, and gender lines. Hence, in the short run the direct competition between native workers and immigrants are very unlikely. And the homosocial reproduction on the job is the main reason for the persistence of social inequality in the labor market. |
