Toward A Theory of Racial Differences in Employment

The labor force is conceived as a queue in which workers are arrayed according to their employability, i.e., desirability to employers. Those at the head of the queue are the most desirable employees; first hired and last fired. Those at its tail are last hired and first fired. From this simple model the following propositions are developed about group differences in employment: (1) the greater the difference between the two groups on the underlying (objective) determinants of employability, the greater the unemployment differential between them; (2) the less the variability of the disadvantaged group on the characteristics determining employability, the less the employment differential among them; (3) the more depressed the economy, the greater the unemployment differential between advantaged and disadvantaged; and (4) the larger the relative size of the disadvantaged group, the less the unemployment differential. The article integrates these familiar propositions into a single, coherent theory. The propositions are confirmed by an illustrative cross-sectional analysis for 1960 of white-nonwhite unemployment differentials in Standard Metropolitan Areas.