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96 Monthly Lab. Rev. 10 (1973)
Factors Affecting the Job Status of Workers with Spanish Surnames

handle is hein.journals/month96 and id is 386 raw text is: Factors affecting the job status of workers with Spanish surnames OF ALL Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans at work on the U.S. continent, those working full time in larke firms located in major urban labor markets are probably most assimilated into the economy. Nevertheless, even this group has trouble in func- tioning effectively in the labor market. Spanish-sur- named workers are at a significantly lower rung on the occupational ladder than other white (Anglo) workers. That is, a higher proportion of Spanish- surnamed workers than of Anglo workers is in lower paying occupations. The causes are many and complex, clearly includ- ing problems of cultural assimilation faced by mem- bers of any ethnic groups in work settings where other groups predominate. Discrimination, in viola- tion of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as recently amended, may also be a causal factor. This article presents a profile of the occupational standing of Spanish-surnamed workers and the estimation of a statistical model that seeks to identify factors asso- dated with their occupational standing. Its purpose is to examine the importance of facfors that directly affect the behavior of the employing unit as opposed to factors not likely to affect that behavior1 Data are from tabulations of 1966 from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well as the 1960 Census of Population. More recent data would probably present an improvea picture of the occupa- tional standing of those of Spanish descent. Neverthe- less, since the associations shown in cross section regression analyses change little over short time periods of 5 to 10 years, the significant relationships between occupational standing and the factors directly affecting the employer's behavior, or not likely to Jerolyn R. Lyle is asistant professor of economics, Ameri- can University. Research for this article was supported by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A model is developed to test the relative importance of factors affecting the behavior of the employer and factors outside the employment context JEROLYN R. LYLE affect it, raise questions that should be considered in shaping policy for the seventies. Index of occupational standing A first step was to obtain an indicator of the ex- tent to which Spanish-surnamed workers have not attained occupational parity. Occupational parity for Spanish-surnamed workers exists when they are dis- tributed among occupations in very much the same proportions as other whites. It should not be con- fused with alternative measures such as occupational equality and income equality. With occupational equality, the average earnings capacity of Chicano, Cuban, and Puerto Rican employees would be equal to that of Anglos, because the occupational distribu- tions would be identical. Income equality requires that the actual average earnings of Spanish-surnamed workers within each occupation be equivalent to the actual average earnings of other white workers in that occupation. To measure the differences between the ideal of occupational parity and the reality, an index was derived showing the average occupational standing of Spanish-surnamed workers compared with that of Anglo workers. Differences between the Spanish- surnamed and Anglo index figures would thus reflect the actual differences in occupational distribution. (See tables I and 2.) - The index is based on data obtained from the Bureau of the Census and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. For each occupation, the Census Bureau has developed measures of socio- economic status based on the average wage and salary income and the years of education com- pleted.2 By weighting the Spanish-surnamed and Anglo occupational distributions obtained from the Commission with the census socioeconomic status score characteristic of the average worker within each occupation, a weighted average of each distri-

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