Department of Labor Logo United States Department of Labor
Dot gov

The .gov means it's official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you're on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

September 1996

Race and the shifting burden of job displacement: 1982-93

Robert W. Fairlie, Lori G. Kletzer

The job displacement rate for blacks converged to that for whites from 1982 to 1993; over the 11-year period, the rate for workers in white-collar occupations, in which blacks were underrepresented, rose, while the rate for blue-collar workers, in which blacks were overrepresented, fell. In this article, a variation of a special decomposition technique is used to account for changes between blacks and whites over time in the burden of job displacement. The analysis reveals a number of factors that help explain the narrowing and subsequent reversal of the displacement rates over the 1980s and into the 1990s.

Download PDF »