Ethnic Minority Unemployment and Local Labour Market Conditions in Great Britain

Abstract

British ethnic minority unemployment rates are considerably higher than those of the white population. In 1991 the ethnic minority unemployment rate was more than double that of the white majority. One possible explanation is that Britain's ethnic minorities are concentrated in areas of economic disadvantage. The authors use the 2% Individual Sample of Anonymised Records (SAR) in conjunction with area-based census data for pseudo travel-to-work areas, to explore the relative importance of individual characteristics and area characteristics on ethnic minority unemployment rates. Multilevel modelling techniques are employed to estimate simultaneously variations between individuals and between areas after allowing for variables measured at both levels of analysis. The most important differences in the propensity to unemployment are shown to be between individuals, and, compared with whites, ethnic minority groups are shown to be disadvantaged wherever they live. In general, there is also evidence of greater variation in ethnic minority unemployment between areas than there is for whites. However, there is the same underlying geography of unemployment for the black and white populations, but a slightly different pattern for Asian ethnic groups. These differences can be explained only partially by area-level characteristics. In all, it is argued that at the spatial scale which is identifiable in the Individual SAR, ethnic minority unemployment cannot be attributed to geographical distribution, though data at a finer geographical scale are needed to test this hypothesis more fully.