Changing Occupational Segregations by Gender, Race, Education, and Nativity in the United States

The proposed project aims to analyze recent trends in occupational segregation in the United States by gender, race, nativity, and education, specifically focusing on detailed occupation levels since the 2000s. The research team will also examine the relationship between segregation and job characteristics such as skills, on-the-job training, job quality, preferred entry level education, work tasks, and work environments. To achieve these goals, the research team will construct a new occupation dataset by integrating various sources of occupational information, including Occupational Outlook Handbook, O*NET, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, National Employment Matrix and other data from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The team will create a harmonized crosswalk between different years of occupational  classifications to ensure data comparability across time. The project’s findings will provide insights into the role of occupations in generating and reproducing social inequality. Moreover, the proposed project will create a valuable data product that future researchers can use to analyze occupations, jobs, and workforce data from US government archival and administrative sources. By examining the influence of changing occupational structures, particularly the emergence of new occupations and the decline of obsolete occupations due to skill-biased technological change, the project will shed light on the evolving social inequality between different demographic groups. Results from the project will reveal discrimination issues in the labor force and help guide workers in choosing career paths, navigating job opportunities, and preparing for occupational changes.