Dynamics of Segregation and Earnings in Brown-collar Occupations

Panel analyses of occupation-level data derived from Los Angeles census data elucidate both the limited labor market success of recent-immigrant Latinos and their potential impact on natives. The author investigates (a) trends in representation of newcomer Latinos in occupations that started with relatively undesirable characteristics and (b) pay degradation (for natives and immigrants) in occupations with strong overrepresentations of newcomer Latinos. Recent-immigrant Latinos increasingly concentrated in poorly paid, irregular occupations where same-gender coethnics were already overrepresented. For men, these were fields with low experience requirements; women's shifts appear unrelated to skill, suggesting increased occupational closure. Importantly, deepening marginalization of newcomer Latinos in brown-collar occupations was accompanied by depreciation in median pay for both immigrant and native incumbents, suggesting an occupation-level contributor to newcomer Latinos' decreasing relative earnings as well as an avenue by which immigrants may adversely affect native workers. Thus far, national, cross-sectional studies of pay penalties associated with ethnic composition have produced ambiguous results. Longitudinal analyses of one ethnic and/or immigrant group in a single local labor market increase understanding of the relation of earnings to minority composition in general.