Racial Equity in the Labor Market — A New Initiative at the Opportunity Lab
A new research agenda will explore how US wage and employment policies have impacted Black-White income inequality
This post was written by CEGA Program Manager Joseph Broadus, who manages the Opportunity Lab (O-Lab) — CEGA’s partner research center focusing on domestic poverty and inequality.
Many of the US policies designed to promote economic security were explicitly written to exclude black workers and families. The minimum wage, social security, and unemployment insurance — in each of these cases, what ultimately made these programs viable in Congress were concessions to Southern congressmen that ultimately excluded many black workers (Katznelson, 2006).
During the Civil Rights Movement, racial justice advocates focused on this exclusion, and on the broader structural and policy impediments to Black advancement in the US economy. Among the demands of the March on Washington in 1963, for example, were several that directly targeted economic policy: a jobs program for all unemployed workers, a national minimum wage of $2 an hour (nearly $17 in 2020 dollars), and a Fair Labor Standards Act covering all employment.
This history has not always been widely acknowledged, and there has been little systematic work in economics on how gaps in the coverage and generosity of labor policies have affected Black-White income inequality.
Starting in 2021, the Opportunity Lab — a multi-disciplinary research center at the University of California, Berkeley dedicated to addressing issues related to US poverty and inequality incubated by CEGA — is launching a new large-scale research effort to build new evidence in this area as part of the recently established WorkRise Network hosted by the Urban Institute. Led by Ellora Derenoncourt and Claire Montialoux, the new Initiative on Racial Equity in the Labor Market is supporting new core faculty research in this area, along with approximately $50,000 in funding support to graduate students conducting their own research on related topics.
The research this initiative will focus on questions such as the following:
- How has the historical evolution and roll-out of US labor market and social insurance policy (e.g., minimum wages, workplace protections, unemployment insurance, social security, and Medicare, among others) disparately affected Black and white workers?
- How has federalism and state variation in policy generosity affected racial inequality?
- What are the consequences of a declining real federal minimum wage on racial gaps?
- The pandemic has led to dramatic shifts in the eligibility, administration, and uptake of UI benefits. How have these changes affected racial inequality in benefits receipt and financial security?
These kinds of questions are at the core of this initiative and represent an important new focus on how wage and employment policy can directly impact Black economic advancement. They are only the start, however; over the coming two years, the Opportunity Lab will support a broad range of new graduate-level projects focused on related and adjacent questions. As racial equity is increasingly incorporated into economic and policy analysis at the University of California, Berkeley and more broadly, the Initiative on Racial Equity in the Labor Market is providing critical leadership on what rigorous research in this area looks like. And as Congress and local governments consider new legislation promoting greater racial equity and economic mobility, the Initiative will offer an important evidence base to inform this critical policy agenda.
