Brown-Collar Jobs: Occupational Segregation and Earnings of Recent-Immigrant Latinos

Abstract

I theorize immigrant employment as a case of occupational segregation and investigate earnings and segregation of recent-immigrant Latinos relative to native workers. Analyses of greater Los Angeles 1980 and 1990 Census 5% PUMS demonstrate increased marginalization of immigrant Latinos in “brown-collar” occupations (where Latino immigrants are vastly overrepresented among incumbents). During the 1980s earnings inequality grew between recent immigrants and native-born whites, blacks, and Latinos, even controlling for group differences in labor market characteristics. Yet pay inequality did not rise between whites and native minorities, suggesting deleterious processes particular to immigrant Latinos. Analyses of occupational dissimilarity demonstrate that native minorities are less segregated from immigrant Latinos than are whites; and segregation of recent-immigrant Latinos from native workers intensified in the 1980s, but segregation from earlier-immigrant co-ethnics remained fairly constant. A number of low-level occupations in Los Angeles are now clearly identifiable as brown collar.