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Achieving Anew
How New Immigrants Do in American Schools, Jobs, and Neighborhoods
Michael J. White
Russell Sage Foundation, 2009
Can the recent influx of immigrants successfully enter the mainstream of American life, or will many of them fail to thrive and become part of a permanent underclass? Achieving Anew examines immigrant life in school, at work, and in communities and demonstrates that recent immigrants and their children do make substantial progress over time, both within and between generations. From policymakers to private citizens, our national conversation on immigration has consistently questioned the country's ability to absorb increasing numbers of foreign nationals—now nearly one million legal entrants per year. Using census data, longitudinal education surveys, and other data, Michael White and Jennifer Glick place their study of new immigrant achievement within a context of recent developments in assimilation theory and policies regulating who gets in and what happens to them upon arrival. They find that immigrant status itself is not an important predictor of educational achievement. First-generation immigrants arrive in the United States with less education than native-born Americans, but by the second and third generation, the children of immigrants are just as successful in school as native-born students with equivalent social and economic background. As with prior studies, the effects of socioeconomic background and family structure show through strongly. On education attainment, race and ethnicity have a strong impact on achievement initially, but less over time. Looking at the labor force, White and Glick find no evidence to confirm the often-voiced worry that recent immigrants and their children are falling behind earlier arrivals. On the contrary, immigrants of more recent vintage tend to catch up to the occupational status of natives more quickly than in the past. Family background, educational preparation, and race/ethnicity all play a role in labor market success, just as they do for the native born, but the offspring of immigrants suffer no disadvantage due to their immigrant origins. New immigrants continue to live in segregated neighborhoods, though with less prevalence than native black-white segregation. Immigrants who arrived in the 1960s are now much less segregated than recent arrivals. Indeed, the authors find that residential segregation declines both within and across generations. Yet black and Mexican immigrants are more segregated from whites than other groups, showing that race and economic status still remain powerful influences on where immigrants live. Although the picture is mixed and the continuing significance of racial factors remains a concern, Achieving Anew provides compelling reassurance that the recent wave of immigrants is making impressive progress in joining the American mainstream. The process of assimilation is not broken, the advent of a new underclass is not imminent, and the efforts to argue for the restriction of immigration based on these fears are largely mistaken.
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Discrimination, Jobs, and Politics
The Struggle for Equal Employment Opportunity in the United States since the New Deal
Paul Burstein
University of Chicago Press, 1985
Throughout this impressive and controversial account of the fight against job discrimination in the United States, Paul Burstein poses searching questions. Why did Congress adopt EEO legislation in the sixties and seventies? Has that legislation made a difference to the people it was intended to help? And what can the struggle for equal employment opportunity tell us about democracy in the United States?

"This is an important, well-researched book. . . . Burstein has had the courage to break through narrow specializations within sociology . . . and even to address the types of acceptable questions usually associated with three different disciplines (political science, sociology, and economics). . . . This book should be read by all professionals interested in political sociology and social movements."—Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Social Forces

"Discrimination, Jobs and Politics [is] satisfying because it tells a more complete story . . . than does most sociological research. . . . I find myself returning to it when I'm studying the U.S. women's movement and recommending it to students struggling to do coherent research."—Rachel Rosenfeld, Contemporary Sociology

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Egalitarian Capitalism
Jobs, Incomes, and Growth in Affluent Countries
Lane Kenworthy
Russell Sage Foundation, 2004
Declining participation in labor unions, the movement toward a service-based economy, and increased globalization have cast doubt on the extent to which welfare states can continue to stem inequality in market economies over the long-term. Does the new economy render existing models of social assistance obsolete? Do traditional welfare states hamper economic and employment growth, thereby worsening the plight of the poor? Lane Kenworthy offers a rigorous empirical analysis of these questions in Egalitarian Capitalism. The book examines sixteen industrialized countries in North America, Western Europe, and Scandinavia—each with different approaches to assisting the poor—to see how successful each has been in developing its economy and curbing inequality over the past twenty years. Kenworthy finds that inequality grew in almost all of these countries, from the most progressive to the least. Using simple but powerful statistical tests, he assesses the theory that inequality is necessary to improve economic growth and reduce poverty. He finds no necessary trade-off between equality and economic growth but discovers some evidence that high minimum wages dampen employment growth in private sector services. Kenworthy suggests that without greater private sector employment, public supports may be unable to adequately sustain living standards for the poor. An equitable growth strategy necessitates a balance of policy options: Creating jobs is aided by loose employment regulation, low payroll taxes, and, in some cases, lower real wages for workers at the bottom of the income spectrum. However, high employment is also facilitated by a system that "makes work pay" with earnings subsidies, workplace flexibilities, financial support for those who are between jobs or unable to work, and universal health and child care coverage. Kenworthy suggests that these strategies, though generally presented as mutually exclusive, could be effectively combined to create a robust, fair economy. Egalitarian Capitalism addresses fundamental questions of national policy with rigorous scholarship and a clarity that makes it accessible to any reader interested in the alleged trade-off between social equity and market efficiency. The book analyzes the viability of traditional welfare regimes and offers sustainable options that can promote egalitarian societies without hampering economic progress. A Volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology
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Faith, Hope, and Jobs
Welfare-to-Work in Los Angeles
Stephen V. Monsma and J. Christopher Soper
Georgetown University Press, 2006

A front-burner issue on the public policy agenda today is the increased use of partnerships between government and nongovernmental entities, including faith-based social service organizations. In the wake of President Bush's faith-based initiative, many are still wondering about the effectiveness of these faith-based organizations in providing services to those in need, and whether they provide better outcomes than more traditional government, secular nonprofit, and for-profit organizations. In Faith, Hope, and Jobs, Stephen V. Monsma and J. Christopher Soper study the effectiveness of 17 different welfare-to-work programs in Los Angeles County—a county in which the U.S. government spends 14% of its entire welfare budget—and offer groundbreaking insight into understanding what works and what doesn't.

Monsma and Soper examine client assessment of the programs, their progress in developing attitudes and resources important for finding self-supporting employment, and their experience in finding actual employment. The study reveals that the clients of the more explicitly faith-based programs did best in gaining in social capital and were highly positive in evaluating the religious components of their programs. For-profit programs tended to do the best in terms of their clients finding employment. Overall, the religiously active respondents tended to experience better outcomes than those who were not religiously active but surprisingly, the religiously active and non-active tended to do equally well in faith-based programs.

Faith, Hope, and Jobs concludes with three sets of concrete recommendations for public policymakers, social service program managers, and researchers.

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Jesus, Jobs, and Justice
African American Women and Religion
Bettye Collier-Thomas
Temple University Press, 2013
Bettye Collier-Thomas’s groundbreaking book, Jesus, Jobs, and Justice—now available for the first time in paperback—provides a remarkable account of the religious faith, social and political activism, and extraordinary resilience of black women during the centuries of American growth and change. As co-creators of churches, women were a central factor in their development. However, women often had to cope with sexism in black churches, as well as racism in mostly white denominations.
 
Collier-Thomas skillfully shows how black church women created national organizations such as the National Association of Colored Women, the National League of Colored Republican Women, and the National Council of Negro Women to fight for civil rights and combat discrimination. She also examines how black women missionaries sacrificed their lives in service to their African sisters whose destiny they believed was tied to theirs.
 
While religion has been a guiding force in the lives of most African Americans, for black women it has been essential. Jesus, Jobs, and Justice restores black women to their rightful place in American and black history and demonstrates their faith in themselves, their race, and their God.
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Jobs and Economic Development in Minority Communities
edited by Paul Ong and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris
Temple University Press, 2006
Over the past four decades, the forces of economic restructuring, globalization, and suburbanization, coupled with changes in social policies have dimmed hopes for revitalizing minority neighborhoods in the U.S. Community economic development offers a possible way to improve economic and employment opportunities in minority communities. In this authoritative collection of original essays, contributors evaluate current programs and their prospects for future success.Using case studies that consider communities of African-Americans, Latinos, Asian immigrants, and Native Americans, the book is organized around four broad topics. "The Context" explores the larger demographic, economic, social, and physical forces at work in the marginalization of minority communities. "Labor Market Development" discusses the factors that shape supply and demand and examines policies and strategies for workforce development. "Business Development" focuses on opportunities and obstacles for minority-owned businesses. "Complementary Strategies" probes the connections between varied economic development strategies, including the necessity of affordable housing and social services.Taken together, these essays offer a comprehensive primer for students as well as an informative overview for professionals.
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Jobs and the Labor Force of Tomorrow
Migration, Training, Education
Michael Pagano
University of Illinois Press, 2017
The new volume in the Urban Agenda series addresses the challenges shaping the development of human capital in metropolitan regions. The articles, products of the 2016 Urban Forum at the University of Illinois at Chicago, engage with the overarching idea that a dynamic metropolitan economy needs a diverse, trained, and available workforce that can adapt to the needs of commerce, industry, government, and the service sector. Authors explore provocative issues like the jobless recovery, migration and immigration, K-12 education preparedness, the urban-oriented gig economy, postsecondary workforce training, and the recruitment and professional development of millennials.

Contributors: Xochitl Bada, John Bragelman, Laura Dresser, Rudy Faust, Beth Gutelius, Brad Harrington, Gregory V. Larnell, Twyla T. Blackmond Larnell, and Nik Theodore.
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Marginal Workers, Marginal Jobs
The Underutilization of American Workers
By Teresa A. Sullivan
University of Texas Press, 1978

Unemployment levels have received a great deal of attention and discussion in recent years. However, another labor category—underemployment—has virtually been ignored. Underutilized or underemployed workers are those who are experiencing inadequate hours of work, insufficient levels of income, and mismatch of occupation and skills. Marginal Workers, Marginal Jobs addresses two principal issues: how can we measure underemployment, and how can we explain its prevalence?

To answer the first question, Teresa Sullivan examines yardsticks in use, demonstrates their inadequacy, and develops a different measure that is easy to interpret and is usable by both demographers and economists. In answering the second, she analyzes 1960 and 1970 census data to determine the relative effects of population composition and job structure on levels of employment.

One of the important contributions of Sullivan's study is to distinguish between marginal workers and marginal jobs in explaining underutilization. Previous explanations, including the widely used dual market theory, have not stressed this analytic distinction. In addition, her work accounts separately for the various types of marginality and seeks to show the condition of workers who are marginal on more than one count—for example, those who are both young and black, or old and female.

A provocative study based on large samples of the U.S. population, this book raises important questions about a critical subject and makes a significant contribution to the theory of underutilization.

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Men, Women, and Jobs
A Study in Human Engineering
Donald Paterson
University of Minnesota Press, 1936
Men, Women, and Jobs was first published in 1936. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.Basing their recommendations on reliable tests of vocational aptitudes, the authors point the way to better vocational guidance and re-education, and to their use as weapons against unemployment.This is the story of a five-year investigation conducted as part of the work of the Employment Stabilization Research Institute of the University of Minnesota. The Institute’s Committee on Individual Diagnosis and Training (including experts in the fields of psychology, sociology, medicine, and economics) interviewed thousands of persons, and endeavored to discover why some were employed and others were not, and to devise means for the retraining and improved adjustment of those who were unemployed. This non-technical report includes scores of case histories and describes the tests used to determine whether persons had been doing the kind of work for which they were fitted by nature and training.
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Negroes and Jobs
A Book of Readings
Edited by Louis A. Ferman, Joyce L. Kornbluh and J.A. Miller
University of Michigan Press, 1968
The development of Negro job opportunities is a vital first step toward the total integration of the Negro into American society. The civil rights movement and the War on Poverty have focused national attention on the Negro employment problem, but much remains to be done before a solution is reached. Negroes and Jobs gives a thorough, well-rounded account of the Negro worker's economic position in the contemporary labor market. It is a compendium of more than thirty articles, all written since 1960, dealing with various aspects of Negro employment. Many of the Negro's employment problems are common to all underprivileged American citizens, but certain aspects of the dilemma, such as the development of the urban ghettos and the persistence of racial discrimination, serve to separate and intensify the plight of the Negro worker. This book discusses the causes of Negro job disadvantagement, the nature of the Negro job market and the factors that affect it, the behavior of Negroes in the labor market, and past and future programs of action to increase the Negro's access to job opportunities.
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The Problem of Jobs
Liberalism, Race, and Deindustrialization in Philadelphia
Guian A. McKee
University of Chicago Press, 2008
Contesting claims that postwar American liberalism retreated from fights against unemployment and economic inequality, The Problem of Jobs reveals that such efforts did not collapse after the New Deal but instead began to flourish at the local, rather than the national, level.

With a focus on Philadelphia, this volume illuminates the central role of these local political and policy struggles in shaping the fortunes of city and citizen alike. In the process, it tells the remarkable story of how Philadelphia’s policymakers and community activists energetically worked to challenge deindustrialization through an innovative series of job retention initiatives, training programs, inner-city business development projects, and early affirmative action programs. Without ignoring the failure of Philadelphians to combat institutionalized racism, Guian McKee's account of their surprising success draws a portrait of American liberalism that evinces a potency not usually associated with the postwar era. Ultimately interpreting economic decline as an arena for intervention rather than a historical inevitability, The Problem of Jobs serves as a timely reminder of policy’s potential to combat injustice.
 
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Race, Jobs, and the War
Andrew E. Kersten
University of Illinois Press, 1999
A richly detailed look at the crucial role of federally supported civil rights activism

In this rigorous and thoroughly documented study focusing on the pivotal Midwest, Andrew E. Kersten shows how a tiny government agency--the President's Committee on Fair Employment Practice (FEPC)--influenced the course of civil rights reform, moving the United States closer to a national fair employment policy and laying the foundation for today's contested affirmative action practices.

Rejecting claims that black advancement during the war was due primarily to shortages of labor, Race, Jobs, and the War contends that the FEPC made significant strides in breaking racial barriers, settling complaints, and pursuing a vigorous educational campaign to foster more harmonious industrial relations between white and minority workers.

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