Despite Rising To Top Professions, Black Men Still Don't Earn Top Pay: Study

Black men and White men employed in higher-paying, top occupations earn different wages with Black professionals making considerably less, according to a comprehensive study based on the 1990 Census on occupations and wages.

At the beginning of the 1990s, Blacks working in the top private sector jobs earned 20% less than similar White workers, a racial disparity far greater than in lower-paid jobs, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison sociologists Eric Grodsky and Devah Pager, authors of the study published in the August issue of the American Sociological Review.

The research reportedly tracked more than I million Black, White, Hispanic and Asian workers and discovered that even when Black men reach top occupations such as lawyers, physicians and financial service sales reps and managers, they are paid about 72 cents for every $1 White men earn.

"It seems that in the private sector, the higher the occupational gain [of a Black man], the lower their earnings," Grodsky told JET. `They're actually worse off than others."

"This should be a wake-up call for those who believe increases in occupational mobility will automatically lead to racial earnings equality," the authors note. "Black men have made inroads into the most highly paid occupations, but once they get there, they find they still don't earn as much as equally qualified White men."

Grodsky and Pager's findings are based on 1990 Census data, with a sample size adequate for evaluating racial earnings inequalities.

They scrutinized over 470 occupations and found that Black workers in securities and financial sales saw the greatest pay disparity. Black men working in that field brought home much less pay than White men.

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Black dentists and physicians earned 80 cents for every dollar earned by their White colleagues. Black lawyers earned 79 cents for every dollar earned by White lawyers. Other private-sector jobs in which Black men held the greatest, disadvantage included insurance sales, securities and financial services sales, actuaries, lawyers and physicians.

Occupations with large racial earnings disparities tend to be those that rely on the wealth of clients for their success, Grodsky and Pager say. Differences in earnings for such occupations may be due to commissions on the value of property or other assets sold, or through disparities in fees charged. "Because the social networks between Blacks and Whites are fairly segregated and Blacks on average have less wealth than Whites, Black professionals and sales representatives have less access to the lucrative customer base necessary to boost their earnings," according to Grodsky.

The disparities in these occupations might also arise if employers assign their Black employees to serve minority communities. For example, if Black real estate agents are disproportionately assigned to Black clients and neighborhoods, their sales commissions will be significantly lower than their White coworkers' because property values in Black neighborhoods are generally lower than those in White neighborhoods.

"We think the disparity may be directly related to the networks of clients [Whites and Blacks contact]," says Grodsky.

While on average Black men earned less than otherwise similar White men in the private sector, the percentage difference in earnings between Blacks and Whites was smallest (5%) in the lowest-paid occupations and greatest in the highest-paid occupations.

Reinforcing this explanation for the racial gap in the earnings, Grodsky and Pager also found that private-sector occupations with the smallest racial disparities are often those in which salary depends little on the type of clients served. Upholsterers, bus drivers, hotel clerks and woodworking machine operators, for example, are occupations with smaller racial differences in pay. In these occupations, wage rates are set on the basis of production or experience rather than the demand for service from a particular clientele.