Remembering the Forgotten Minority: An Analysis of American Indian Employment Patterns in State and Local Government, 1991–2011

Abstract

For the eight states with the greatest percentages of American Indian and Alaskan Native (AIAN) populations—Alaska, Arizona, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wyoming—we use 24 years (1991–2015) of US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data to examine whether AIANs are overrepresented in the lower paying, less desirable, non-managerial, public sector positions in local and state government bureaucracies and underrepresented in the more desirable, better paying, managerial positions (e.g., administrative and professional positions). In both workforces, we examine if levels of descriptive representation within the states changed over time. We find AIANs continue to suffer pervasive and persistent occupational segregation in non-managerial levels of bureaucratic organizations, in each state except Oklahoma. Across time in managerial ranks, we observe slight improvement in three states—Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma—and declining job shares in the remaining five states.