Trends in occupational distribution and employment for black women post World War II

This paper uses census microdata from IPUMS USA and mid‑1960s labor statistics to trace how Black and white women's work evolved between 1950 and 1990. It shows that postwar increases in women's labor force participation reflected convergence toward Black women's already high participation rather than a uniform "entry" of all women into paid work. While white women moved rapidly into clerical and other white‑collar jobs, Black women remained disproportionately concentrated in domestic and service work well into the 1970s, even as their participation rates continued to rise. A 1965 snapshot and age‑specific participation data reveal that these racialized job channels were already visible in young women's first jobs, and income tabulations indicate that racial inequality operated more through occupational sorting than through large within‑occupation pay gaps. Drawing on theories of segmented labor markets, the Great Migration, and the "double legacy" of slavery, the paper argues that Black women's delayed and more limited entry into white‑collar work resulted from the interaction of unequal schooling, discriminatory hiring, deindustrialization and the criminalization of Black men, and historically rooted norms about whose labor "belongs" in which part of the economy.