9.13: Ethnicity and the Economy

Your ethnicity may also guide (not determine!) how you navigate many life choices and obstacles. Students on multi-ethnic campuses see this process unfolding across the university campus. Certain ethnicities are easier to find in engineering and business buildings. Some ethnicities are particularly rare in majors like Anthropology or Agriculture. Gender biases compound these tendencies further. Students chose majors in part because of the values placed on certain career paths by their family and/or community. These biases play out in many areas in the economy.

9-30: A graphic from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Note the significant differences in occupation by gender and ethnicity. Source: Bureau Labor Statistics

Differences in the choice of major or career are partially a result of variations in values among various ethnic groups. Some groups seem to value high-paying careers. Other groups seem to value prestigious occupations. Still others value occupations that have intrinsic rewards or those with specific fringe benefits, like ample vacation time, or good health care packages. Some folks just hate to have a boss, and so chose to be self-employed. In the US, About 13% of white males are self-employed. Black males are about half as likely to be self-employed. Men from Israel or Korea are mostly like to be self-employed at around 30% of the time. Immigrants come to America sometimes pre-equipped with specific skills – especially if they are coming from a distant land. Because it can be expensive to get into the US, groups including Koreans and Israelis often have some business experience before arriving in the US. Other migrant groups, especially those from nearby countries like Mexico or Honduras, generally have a shorter, less costly journey to America, allowing them to arrive in the US with fewer skills. Again, location factors into a robust understanding of why things are the way they are.

Other elements of occupational choice are a bit more mundane. You may get a job in a field because some relatives helped you get started. Particularly in big cities, where robust ethnic employment niches develop, you’ll find specific job categories or businesses dominated by a single ethnicity. A great example is the motel or hospitality industry where South Asian-Americans operate about half of all US motels. Interestingly, most of these South Asians are Gujaratis, a linguistic ethnic group spread across the India-Pakistan border. So strong are family connections in this process that a single name dominates this area of the hospitality industry, lending itself to the catchphrase used to describe these lodgings: “Patel Motels.” It appears that a single Gujarati man, who opened a sort of youth hostel in the US during the 1940s, may have started a snowballing process. He was able to demonstrate that a farmer from India could succeed in this industry, inspiring others from the same region. Many of the others that tried, and succeeded in running a motel, invited friends and relatives to work for them; and naturally, after a few years, those employees ventured out and started running a motel for themselves. The hospitality industry has built-in advantages for impoverished immigrants seeking a better life for their family, including built-in and housing, and an opportunity for women to stay-at-home with children.

Figure 9-31: Prague, Czech Republic. In Europe, many Asian immigrants are self-employed as they are in the US. Migrants from more distant regions tend to bring more skills than migrants from neighboring countries.

Other sectors of the economy may have a less random origin. For example, Korean-Americans own almost all stores that sell hair-care products designed for the African-American market. It is a somewhat bizarre reality, but it can be traced to a few international trade policies adopted by the US and South Korea decades ago that made Korean wig manufacturers and distributors more competitive than those from other countries. Korean-Americans came to dominate the industry, and the web of familial and linguistic ties (and barriers) has made it difficult for non-Koreans (including African-Americans) to break into a business that largely caters to African-Americans.