People Of Color Shut Out Of Worcester’s Best Government Jobs
Wednesday, September 04, 2013
Government jobs have been a traditional path to economic gain for minority communities, but in Worcester, the jobs have dwindled while populations have increased.
A database recently constructed by the United States Census Bureau’s Center for Economic Studies in collaboration with the Urban Institute compares who held local government jobs with the racial makeup of major cities and metropolitan areas nationwide. The database tracks the information beginning in the 1960s and ends in 2008. The census data on which the database is built is not available to the public.
To see the data and trends in Worcester, Springfield, and Boston areas, see the slides, below.
Racial + ethnic ranks: police, firefighters and school teachers
“I'm a historian by training and my research interests include issues of social equality and urban geography,” said Dr. Todd K. Gardner, historian and statistician at the U.S. Census Bureau. “In working with the 1960 census it occurred to me that these data predate the immigration reform and civil rights legislation of the 1960s, and I thought it would be interesting to look at how the racial and ethnic make-up of public sector workers, such as the police, firefighters and school teachers has mirrored the populations they serve in the last 50+ years.”
According to the database, in 1980 6.8% of high paying local government jobs in Worcester were held by people of color who made up 6.5% of the city’s population overall. These jobs include police officers, firefighters, and schoolteachers. However, as the number of people of color in Worcester has risen, their share of high paying local government jobs has not. In 2008 people of color made up 35.5% of Worcester population, but held only 12.3% of high paying local government jobs.
“In terms of the implications, it is terribly problematic," said Professor Melissa Weiner of Worcester's College of the Holy Cross. "It means that decisions are often not being made by representatives of groups that are most impacted, or without even speaking to those people who might just be working in the offices, and thus remain voiceless when it comes to they city's decisions,” she said.
Low-paying government jobs no better
Progress in low paying jobs was not much better. In 1980 8.9% of those jobs were held by people of color and in 2008 19.7% of those jobs were held by people of color – a drastic drop considering the number of people of color in the overall population. These jobs include maintenance workers and secretaries.
“The general conclusion I reached in looking at data for the United States as a whole has been that in areas where the Hispanic and other race populations has been growing rapidly, local governments have had difficulty keeping up with the demographic changes,” said Dr. Gardner.
“Worcester's population has gotten considerably more diverse since 1960,” he said. “In general, it appears that local government employment in Worcester has been slow to diversify and that whites are increasingly disproportionately represented in both high- and low-wage local government jobs.”
Cutting off "significant avenue of mobility"
Holy Cross's Weiner saw Worcester's profound decline in minority representation an issue larger even than representation. “It blocks a significant avenue of mobility for people of color that, were the numbers higher, could dramatically impact and improve the socioeconomic standing of communities of color, as well as their position of power within the city, and the city as a whole,” she said. “In many cities, communities of color who are employed by the government represent a significant middle class within the city. Without these jobs, mobility is limited.”
See how Worcester's minority representation in government jobs compares to Springfield and Boston, below.
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