William J. Carrington

The Impact of 1970s Repatriates from Africa on the Portuguese Labor Market

This paper examines the labor market effect of the retornados who immigrated to Portugal from Angola and Mozambique in the mid-1970s following Portugals loss of its African colonies. The retornados increased the Portuguese labor force by roughly 10% in just three years. Two analyses suggest contrasting conclusions. First, comparisons of Portugal with Spain and France indicate that any adverse effect of the retornados was quantitatively swamped by the Europe-wide downturn in labor market conditions in the 1970s. Second, comparisons between districts within Portugal indicate that the retornados may have had a strong adverse effect on Portuguese wages, suggesting that immigration may be considerably more harmful than previous case studies have concluded. The authors, however, regard the results of the within-Portugal analysis as less reliable than those of the comparison across countries.

Wage Losses for Displaced Workers: Is It Really the Firm That Matters?

Many studies have shown that displaced workers experience substantial wage reductions that are strongly related to their predisplacement job tenure and experience. This paper is an assessment of whether firm closures or downturns in more broadly defined labor markets drive the extreme wage losses of high tenure, high experience displaced workers. I show that the relatively high wage losses of high experience displaced workers are primarily due to their heightened sensitivity to downturns in their state, industry, and occupation. However, the large wage losses of high tenure displaced workers are not explained by their sensitivity to these local downturns. One interpretation of these facts is that firm specialization is linked primarily to firm-specific experience, but not to general labor market experience.

On Measuring Segregation in Samples with Small Units

Standard indexes of segregation measure a samples distance from evenness, which occurs when each sample unit (e.g., an occupation) has the population share of both the minority and majority groups. We show that random allocation of individuals to units generates substantial unevenness among small units and hence that standard segregation indexes reflect random allocation as well as systematic group segregation. We then modify two popular indexes so that they measure deviations from random allocation rather than deviations from evenness. An empirical example suggests that these modified indexes provide improved measures of the systematic component of group segregation.

Gender Segregation in Small Firms

This paper studies interfirm gender segregation in a unique sample of small employers. We find that interfirm segregation is prevalent among small employers, as men and women rarely work in fully integrated firms. We also find that the education and sex of the business owner strongly influence the sex composition of a firms workforce. Finally, we estimate that interfirm segregation can account for up to 50 percent of the gender gap in annual earnings.

Sex Segregation in U.S. Manufacturing

This study of interplant sex segregation in the U.S. manufacturing industry improves on previous work by using more detailed information on the characteristics of both workers and firms and adopting an improved measure of segregation. The data source is the Worker-Establishment Characteristics Database (a U.S. Census Bureau database) for 1990. There are three main findings. First, interplant sex segregation in the U.S. manufacturing industry is substantial, particularly among blue-collar workers. Second, even in analyses that control for a variety of plant characteristics, the authors find that female managers tend to work in the same plants as female supervisees. Finally, they find that interplant sex segregation can account for a substantial fraction of the male/female wage gap in the manufacturing industry, particularly among blue-collar workers.

Interfirm Segregation and the Black/White Wage Gap

This article studies interfirm racial segregation in two newly developed firm‐level databases. We find that the interfirm distribution of black and white workers is close to what would be implied by random assignment. We also find that black workers are clustered in employers where managers, owners, and customers are also black. These findings may be reconciled by the facts that (a) there are not enough black employers to generate much segregation and that (b) other forces may systematically integrate black and white workers. Finally, we find that the black/white wage gap is primarily a within‐firm phenomenon.

Nondiscrimination Rules and the Distribution of Fringe Benefits

This article considers the impact of nondiscrimination (ND) rules in the federal tax code. Nondiscrimination rules limit within‐firm inequality in the provision on nonwage benefits, but they place no corresponding limit on within‐firm inequality in wages. Firms can skirt ND rules by moving workers with unusual benefits into part‐time and seasonal positions because workers in such positions are excluded from some ND compliance calculations. We examine these issues empirically and find relationships consistent with the hypothesis that ND rules provide a binding constrain on within‐firms benefits inequality.

The Impact of Welfare Reform on Leaver Characteristics, Employment and Recidivism

State and federal reforms of the 1990s transformed the U.S. cash assistance program for single parents and their children. Despite an extensive literature examining these changes and their impacts, there have been few studies that consider the effects of these reforms from the perspective of the recent period. The analysis here focuses on the characteristics and employment of welfare recipients in Maryland and Missouri, 1991-2004. We find that there has been only modest change in the observable characteristics of those entering, remaining on or leaving welfare, but the importance of employment has grown for each of these groups. We also examine the dynamics of employment and welfare recidivism, comparing cohorts of leavers prior to and after welfare reform. We find that after welfare reform leavers are much more likely to be working. Although in Maryland those working have earnings that are somewhat below employed leavers prior to reform, in Missouri earnings for employed leavers are unchanged. In both states, the types of jobs leavers hold have not changed substantially, and leavers are less likely to return to welfare following reform.