Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-9q27g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T21:20:54.373Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Last Hired, First Fired? Unemployment and Urban Black Workers During the Great Depression

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

William A. Sundstrom
William A. Sundstrom
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 95053.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Throughout the Great Depression, the unemployment rates of blacks exceeded those of whites in urban areas of both North and South. Among men, this difference was largely due to racial differences in occupational status, whereas among women, unemployment rates were dramatically higher for blacks even within specific occupations. The occupational pattern of the unemployment gap suggests that labor market discrimination played a role, especially in unskilled service jobs.

Type
Papers Presented at the Fifty-First Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , June 1992 , pp. 415 - 429
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alston, Lee J., and Ferrie, Joseph P., “Labor Costs, Paternalism, and Loyalty in Southern Agriculture: A Constraint on the Growth of the Welfare State,” this Journal, 45 (03 1985), pp. 95–117.Google Scholar
Becker, Gary S., The Economics of Discrimination (2nd edn., Chicago, 1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cayton, Horace R., and Mitchell, George S., Black Workers and the New Unions (Chapel Hill, 1939).Google Scholar
Darby, Michael R., “Three-and-a-Half Million U.S. Employees Have Been Mislaid: Or, an Explanation of Unemployment, 1934–1941,” Journal of Political Economy, 84 (02 1976), pp. 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dewey, Donald, “Negro Employment in Southern Industry,” Journal of Political Economy, 60 (08 1952), pp. 279–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldin, Claudia, Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women (New York, 1990).Google Scholar
Jensen, Richard J., “The Causes and Cures of Unemployment in the Great Depression,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 19 (Spring 1989), pp. 553–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Margo, Robert, Race and Schooling in the South, 1880–1950: An Economic History (Chicago, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Margo, Robert, “The Competitive Dynamics of Racial Exclusion: Employment Segregation in the South, 1900–1950,” NBER Working Paper on Historical Factors in Long Run Growth No. 14 (08 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myrdal, Gunnar, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, vol. 1 (New York, 1972).Google Scholar
National Urban League, How Unemployment Affects Negroes (New York, 1931).Google Scholar
National Urban League, Unemployment Status of Negroes (New York, 1931).Google Scholar
National Urban League, The Forgotten Tenth (New York, 1933).Google Scholar
New York State Temporary Commission on the Condition of the Urban Colored Population, Report (Albany, 1938).Google Scholar
Ross, Arthur M., “The Negro Worker in the Depression,” Social Forces, 18 (05 1940), pp. 550–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shulman, Steven, “Discrimination, Human Capital, and Black-White Unemployment: Evidence from Cities,” Journal of Human Resources, 22 (Summer 1987), pp. 361–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shulman, Steven, “The Causes of Black Poverty: Evidence and Interpretation,” Journal of Economic Issues, 24 (12 1990), pp. 995–1016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sitkoff, Harvard, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue, vol. I: The Depression Decade (New York, 1978).Google Scholar
Smith, James P., “Race and Human Capital,” American Economic Review, 74 (09 1984), pp. 685–98.Google Scholar
Spero, Sterling D., and Harris, Abram L., The Black Worker: The Negro and the Labor Movement (New York, 1931).Google Scholar
U.S. Census of Partial Employment, Unemployment, and Occupations: 1937, Final Report on Total and Partial Unemployment (Washington, DC, 1938).Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, Unemployment, vol. 2 (Washington, DC, 1932).Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin No. 2340, Handbook of Labor Statistics (Washington, DC, 1989).Google Scholar
U.S. Social Security Board, Bureau of Research and Statistics, Statistics of Family Composition in Selected Areas of the United States 1934–36, vol. II: The Urban Sample (Washington, DC, 1943).Google Scholar
Vickery, William Edward, The Economics of the Negro Migration, 1900–1960 (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1969).Google Scholar
Wallis, John Joseph, “Employment in the Great Depression: New Data and Hypotheses,” Explorations in Economic History, 26 (01 1989), pp. 45–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whatley, Warren C., “Labor for the Picking: The New Deal in the South,” this Journal, 43 (12 1983), pp. 905–29.Google Scholar
Whatley, Warren, and Wright, Gavin, “Getting Started in the Auto Industry: Black Workers at the Ford Motor Company, 1918–1947” (Paper presented at the Cliometric Society sessions of the 1990 ASSA annual meeting in Washington, DC, 12 1990).Google Scholar
Wolters, Raymond, Negroes and the Great Depression: The Problem of Economic Recovery (Westport, CT, 1970).Google Scholar
Wright, Gavin, Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy Since the Civil War (New York, 1986).Google Scholar