 My name is Tanzin Avega and I'm the race and inequality reporter for CNN and CNN money I want to just quickly introduce the panelists today that we'll be hearing from and then we'll open it up for two presentations about the report that we're that the EPI is Releasing and then we'll open that up Valerie Wilson is the director of pro of the program on race ethnicity and the economy here at the EPI Next to Valerie is Bill Rogers a Rutgers University professor of public policy Institute and a member of the Black Lives Matter economic policy team and last but not least Richard Freeman is an economist and a professor at Harvard University We'll jump right into things Hear more about the report and hopefully engage in in a lively and an interesting conversation About this research on black-white wage gaps So by now I assume that That the black-white wage gap is larger now than it was in 1979 But I think it's also important to understand the context of this expansion and to understand that this expansion has not occurred in a vacuum Knowing economic inequality and near stagnation of hourly wage growth for the vast majority of American workers. So one way of illustrating this is to come here's the potential for pay increases with median wage growth So, you know first line I have up here is the the line for productivity growth We see that there's been you know, pretty good pretty decent strong productivity growth over the period that we are studying but when we begin to look at how wages have grown for different segments of the population or White men there's actually been and this is median wage growth Earned more than the folks that are represented in this graph There's been a loss of about three percent When we look at wage growth for white women, it's about half of what productivity has grown So it's it's stronger wage growth than white men, but still well below productivity growth When we add African-Americans to this we see again the negative the losses among men We see some positive growth again among African-American women But again well below productivity and for both African-American men and women wage growth is slower Then they're white carts, which we look at these growing racial disparities in pay and You know a growing racial wage yet would be problematic at any time But I think that under these conditions in particular the costs Are even greater because we're talking about losses in an expanding gap as opposed to a growing gap when everyone is you know moving up at a faster rate Hey the racial wage gap so that relative difference in pay between Blacks and whites we spent a lot of time talking about how that has changed And why that has changed but I also want our agenda and plan for economic Justice There are really two issues to address one is this broader issue of wage stagnation as well as Have grown over time and in a few moments my co-author bill Rogers is going to talk some more about some of the recommendations for how we address each of those things so the way that Pitch difference in average hourly wages a full-time Black and white workers So essentially our estimates are measuring How much higher white workers wages are? What means that there's greater equity a larger number means that there's less equity and In order to isolate the the racial component of this difference we perform the analysis Separately for men and for women so we're comparing black men to white men black women to white women to understand What's going on in terms of racial disparities? so these lines show that average Racial wage gap among men that's the blue line and Among women which is the red line Mean these are averages And these are what we call I'm calling these Unadjusted wage gaps meaning they're just the population average That's like all full-time workers the average for black workers as for white workers. We compare them and we get these gaps And I also show in a moment How race and gender intersect but for now we're going to focus exclusively on just the racial differences So again, this is a population average We know that the composition of black workers in the labor is an identity So there are differences in education. There are differences in years of experience of different populations are Parts of the country the thing about 60% of the African-American workforce lives in the south And then there are differences based on whether or not you live in the metropolitan So we control for all of these factors as well And that's how we measure what we're calling an adjusted wage gap So I will add those lines to the picture here And so it's the lighter blue line for men And the brighter red line for women we see that The side gap gets smaller. So Sure those differences account for you know part of this overall observed average difference But it's important to also know that those worker characteristics do not fully explain Racial differences in pay. These lines didn't go to zero once we controlled for those factors The key point of paper is that uh, there is no It's part of of the motivation behind why we're looking at trends for men and women Separately as well as we look at different levels of education and within different regions of the country so then that takes a White women black women and black men relative all to white men. So we're going to put everyone now on the same Uh graph and compare everyone to black men I think there are a few points that I'd like to emphasize from This graph one We see that most of the pay disadvantage experienced by black women is a gender disadvantage We saw that you know if we look at the the difference between these two lines black women are the darker blue White women are the lighter blue The space between these two lines at least in this earlier period 79 early 80s, you know, isn't that white That's just solely the racial component The entire year and you see these gaps are closer to 40 percent around the 40 percent mark That incorporates the gender disadvantage in pace the more of the disadvantage and pay the african-american face is A result of of gender disparities than racial disparities I think something else that pops out in this graph is that there was a period of sharp improvement Uh in the gender gap again as we the smaller number in in the measurement of these gaps is greater equity Uh, so there was a period of sharp improvement and the gender disparity during the 1980s through about the mid 1990s, but about mid 1990s that stopped And when that stopped that's when we begin to see The racial disparity among black women and white women Growing or expanding so throughout most of this we see The gender disparity and the racial disparity essentially moving in opposite directions The red line is black men relative to white men and again, it's you know, gradually increasing Have here One of our other findings again in this uh story about there is no monolithic Black experience Is that racial gaps have grown the most among the most highly educated? I think that's probably one of the more shocking findings in the report Because you know, there's this perception or idea that you know, education is the solution to everything It definitely boosts wages. It increases wages for black and for white workers, but by no means severity and pay This particular graph is for uh, what we call new entrant men So these are men with zero to 10 years of work experience Uh, but the pattern is similar for each of the other groups that we looked at as well We also included more experienced workers and we did this for men and for women as well Get a similar pattern in in the in Early 80s Education were you know close to parity about four percent if you had a bachelor's degree or more That sense has grown to closer to 18 percent uh for workers with the high school diploma only Was higher in 1980 and it's stayed pretty much close to that Uh, as we've gone through time So most of the expansion of racial wage gaps or the largest expansions have happened among the most highly educated I think another interesting take or cut at the data shows what we've seen in terms of the size of the gap across different regions of the country So again, uh starting in 19 the early 80s There were larger racial wage gaps in the south and I don't know that that would be surprising to anyone That the gaps were large south 40 years ago But I think what is interesting is that we've seen Convergence in the size of these gaps over time. So in 1980 there were clear differences Depending on where you lived in the country in terms of what size gap you were going to you were likely to experience what size pay gap But now We see that they're all clustered about around the same size 20 22 percent So what this says is that at some point, you know, there there was an opportunity to move or relocate You know increase your your chances of of having more Pay equity But since that time that is not so much the case anymore It really doesn't matter where you live in the country the size of the gap is going to be About the same Now moving on to our next major finding that is the expansion of these gaps Has not been uniform across time. So we look at sort of the long-term trend. We see it's higher now than in 79 That has in every period of time. So we identify Uh at least three distinct period phases of the black-white wage gap And so in this graph there are two things I want to point out one are the distinct phases we see Again the entire length of these bars measures The change in the black-white wage gap. So a positive number is an expansion of the gap A negative number is a shrinking of the gap So we see there's expansion during the 1980s. You know pretty significant expansion We see a pretty good improvement in the late 1990s period here Uh, and then we see another you know pretty good size expansion In the years since 2007 or a post great recession The other thing that's important to note from this in addition to just the direction that the Gap is moving in these different periods of time Is to understand the reasons why the gap is moving or what's you know Pushing that and so for that shaded regions the darker blue Um represents how much of the change is explained by factors we observe So before and I showed you the difference between the unadjusted and the adjusted gaps That's that blue portion of it. This is education experience region of the country and and metropolitan status So that um, I'm sorry the lighter blue shows you the observable portion. I apologize. I've got that reversed The darker blue is actually showing the unobserved portion or the portion that we don't explain by education experience Describing as discrimination Or uh growing overall wage inequality. That's capture. It captures both of those trends in that segment, but I will say That the majority of that unobservable discrimination so What comes out of this Is that in these periods where we've seen significant change in the gap It's disproportionately being driven by changes in the the impact of Discrimination on the wages of african-americans relative to whites And I'll just show one more again This is look the previous graph was for new entrant men again men with zero to ten years of experience This graph is for a new entrant women. I showed this One again to drive home the point that there is not a single black experience in terms of the Trends in this wage gap, but also to point out some things that are unique Among women over these distinct periods of time for one We see that the expansion of the gap that began in the early 80s continues Through the mid 1990s for women. I think you can see that When I show the race on that graph where we begin to see the racial gap widening even as the the gender component was narrowing But the other thing I think that's unique about this graph is that we have this period here Where most of that change is being explained by things we observe. So education experience region, etc. And in fact Points of the total 6.3 percent Growth in the gap has to do with a growing education gap But not in the way that you may think of an education gap growing because in this period Educational attainment is increasing for African As well, it's just that the rate for white women is is increasing much faster than the rate for black women. So we get this growing educational gap that's expanding Wage gaps even though black women are increasing educational attainment. So that's sort of an an interesting finding there and then Large narrowing of the gap Mainly driven by those unobservable factors discrimination Lessening any Post great recession The largest expansion of racial wage gaps has actually actually been among this group of younger new entrant african-american women so Now that I've given you a Strong healthy dose of Going to turn things over to my co-author bill Rogers Who can hopefully buffer some of this bad news? With some recommendations of what we think can be done. So the news isn't great, but There are ways to Over to bill for that Okay. Um, good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Hello. Hello, Valerie. Um for Your uh friendship and your uh, friendship and uh for doing and presenting the The analysis is going to be one of these papers at least for me. Um, you know, I'll pick it up a week A tidbit out, you know, something I learned or or just there's so much information in it that even a month from now You know, we'll be continuing to digest um These results and what they mean What I want to do is to take a few minutes You know some some of our initial sort of muses of you know, kind of what we think Um, you know needs to be done and and building on Valerie's statements that uh, you know, the african-american experience is not some There's so much heterogeneity and experience is now that that means there's no silver bullet There's no silver bullet uh to to uh solutions what you're going to suggest for young high school graduates is going to be very different probably from what you're going to suggest for college graduates or An earlier work that richard and I had done Where that uh, it was the you know, sort of experience of older workers would insulate the african-american older workers would insulate them from From some of the economic uh from discrimination from uh But in this one of the things that jumps out for me in this in this analysis is That even you know, the older workers are also um Doing you know to have to have fair have fair poorly. Uh, I have seen their their their experiences deteriorate um I'm back But you know one of the and I'm gonna try to preempt preempt it But one of the things that's frustrating about some of these kinds of papers is there'll be long on the analysis And then we'll and then you'll be like, okay, this is what we think we should do and it's like, you know, several pages We will do a deeper dive On the on the solutions that this is sort of page This is the update to work that richard and I have done And john his colleague john bound have done and now we've set the table for us and let's now have that deeper dive in terms of public policy issues Dictator nonprofits can can and should be working together to address these uh matters of income inequality Uh, and that's leads me to this this the other the other point that drives a lot of our work is our recommendation From the two areas what we would call race neutral And then race specific Types of types of solutions. So the recommendations around uh The eoc Uh developing uh measures of discrimination on metro Including a re application of the eo survey that the department of labor Had put in the field back in the late 1990s and 2000 where we were actually collecting Wage and promotion and hiring data from federal contractors That that would be a really really Of resources You know another Good use of resources we think is to You know is to address this issue that the current population survey, you know, it's pretty good in terms of having measures of educational But Many of you will react well that unobservable term. It's not just discrimination You know, maybe the and I had I had got some feedback a couple days ago from a colleague who said that that wage growth That you're seeing amongst college graduates Are you able to take into account? same type of of Courses of study in college versus doing human resources And if you look at those those college salary data, there are tremendous differences Right in pay. And so some of that growth in the college education gap could be due to That are not captured in the cps. So, you know, I work on a technical advisory committee with bls And one of the conversations I will have will with the commissioner And some of my colleagues is is, you know, ken is Because they're always looking to improve their data products that they that We improve our measures of these unobservables. So And would that be in the say the education october supplement? Or is it something that would be worthy enough to be put into the basic the basic cps And an example of it being Of a Cleaning up the data and it's not if you dare I say this sexy, but it but it's but how we measure things are so important Right measurement is so important I think another area That I Would like to like us to pursue, you know is And it's been a conversation that's been going on for probably over a year now And that is whether the federal reserve is going to begin begin to raise interest rates um That the idea here is that some work federal reserve economists that that Seth carpenter and I did a couple years ago You know, we found that when the fed fed pursues contractionary monetary policy You actually do see that african-americans And certain industries We've increases or to contractionary monetary policy And one of the why do I say this? So why is this important? Well, some of the work that richard and I did and I think we're thinking about doing the third version of it We have a third third expansion But you know, we showed in the 1990s that You needed four to five years or two to three years of extremely low unemployment rate You know down unemployment down to the you know the three in the four percent range Um before you know, young less educated african-american men and other and young men and young workers in general began to really really See the benefits via employment and wages. So If you look at the current sort of evidence that's that's that's about the economy and you link that to The uh, this the language that the the fed is talking about where they feel we should be raising You know that's that's in that in their in their realm. Um, you know, I I focused on the the the Real unemployment rate. We like to say it's for the official where they were that includes those who are working part time But want to work full time Job they take it that job was raised still close to 10 percent All right, so there's still is an incredible amount of labor slack In the labor in the market. So beginning to raise rates Would start to slow down the economy of borrowing Is it? Excuse me is more expensive And and then there are a variety of recommendations. I'm not going to go to them in specifically, but there are a variety of recommendations that um, remind me of when I It was about trying to make the workplace fair Make the workplace fair and many of these are now in that bucket where I would call being more race neutral Okay, that if we can make the economy fairer in terms of workers having uh Brights in terms of the real and negotiate in terms of being able to Know what other people are being paid in the work in their colleagues are being paid That will go also. I think of a distance in terms of being helped help help out It didn't help Valerie is shown And and and this is the challenge because because a portion of this growth in inequality It is race specific, but it's also just because as we started the conversation off with that all americans at all americans And then I'll just conclude with um You know with some things that I that that I'm doing and my kind of Personal research, but also I would link it to It's some advocacy work that that are types of activities, but the piece of research that I've been focusing on is the united nations has this wonderful phrase called human priority investments And what's so great about this this concept concept is that includes it's about peace But it also focuses on something that glenn larry taught us early on in his career about social capital And what I've found is that when you look at human priority investment in the us Going back Who slowed down our investment human priorities and these human capital and social capital Investments 1980s And the period from 2001 2007 also two key periods in black, white and in inequality We are On the precipice that we've been sowing the seeds for a third surge In income inequality And hence probably a growth in black, white and black black white inequality if you look over the last few years If you look at And hence enhance the major the cuts And slow down in investments in education training ends in communities Uh Low trend or below what you would predict we would be at And then my final point would be is that the way I think about this policy the policy choice So the things that we can be doing to address in income inequality It really comes down to And then it's in broader income income inequality 1980s style of economic growth Or do we want a 1990s style of economic growth? What what differentiates the two? Is the role of institutions the role of policy? So thank you Gallery for those presentations. I wanted just before we bring in Richard and Dorian. I just wanted to drill down on the issue of discrimination and the unobservables I wrote a piece for about workplace discrimination a couple of my Federal level which showed that the eoc finds it Throws out about three quarters of the workplace discrimination cases that they get because It's so hard difficult to prove Discrimination and it would appear that you guys have in some way quantified When it comes to pay the unobservables Can we assume that those things are? You have the wrong name You went to the wrong school. I mean are those some of the things that I know I know you you suggest that we should do more research into Means, you know when we say discrimination So what are those? What are those types of things that you're seeing? So we don't make an attempt in the paper to define or identify what discrimination is I think you can Including the ones that you've mentioned what we're Basically saying is that Okay, once we've controlled for all of the factors that you know are available and are measured and would reasonably impact a person's wages We I can white workers As bill mentioned there may be you know other Variables that aren't measured or captured that we could plug in here We we tried some additional things and in the paper that I didn't share in the presentation this morning You know an industry Concentration of workers We factored in the impact of declining unionization. We looked within Certain industries and none of those things There may be other Observable things that you know could be included that would maybe narrow it some But and I'm still convinced that there's a sizable portion of the gap That is attributable to discrimination that we Realistics And the the difference by race is significant enough that a significant portion of that I think can be described as discrimination and what struck me most about the report was They are regardless of experience Um, regardless of education Um, there was still a gap when you looked at people, you know Who made who had 11 plus years experience up to 10 years experience had advanced degrees So I think that that does tell us that Yeah, go ahead one of the One of the the, um Piece of piece of evidence that I found also very compelling that that it says with this current population base That that that a good chunk of what we're seeing seeing or a measure or potentially measuring is Is related to discrimination is Look at the those regional The regional chart where Western workers And richard and john were initially captured this in their first version of the piece that they published in the huge quarterly journal economics and Young less educated midwestern black men were pretty much close to parody back in the By the end of the decade, they were now Experiencing similar wage gaps to what we see in the south what we see in the in the in the west, right? Why is that? Well, we know that unionization During that period of time You had president reagan, basically attacking, um, of course going and going at the uh, the the pilot union. That's right. Yeah Or traffic control And so that the path Meaning of really works out beginning depending upon your first effort your view But uh, you know the erosion and manufacturing Largely the midwest and so you had institutions and you had a labor demand that was helped While you had a national overlay of Drilling at and going after organized labor You had you also had it then you also have a not But you didn't have an increase in the minimum wage So back to my my opening comments what i'm what i'm the theme here is You know institutions matter The institutions matter and they and they in an Change in a way that right in economist terms, right? But it made it less costly to discriminate Right or to use race and in deciding out pay outcomes Richard you've been doing this work for decades This paper came out was it surprised dismay? expectations met All right. It was very depressing uh, because I So one of my first papers was right after the civil rights act was passed And at that point you saw these differentials declining sharply and then in this The most depressing were the groups that really had the differentials had become small have now widened So it was that the people who got to It's not quite equality, but close to the family connections There's a whole bunch of little things that you could imagine doing it on that's the uh, the the young men and women who The college graduates women in general was close to the to the white women Just at the mid in the midwest and so you had a group of things you'd said, okay The policy the basic policy of you can't discriminate the some affirmative activity that works To me is the most depressing phenomenon and Bill sort of touched on that in the sense of when you start looking for policy he's The much harder kind of thing you know, it's as if we found a way to stop some cancers And then three years later they're regrowing And and that's a very tough, uh, I think You know issue How much would you say is the enforcement of affirmative action? Is it? You know just this these unobservable, you know I mean Reality is I don't know we need that the kind some of the data that and the analysis that Bill was talking about to illuminate that Head, you know, what fraction would be there? Until recently I assumed that the uh discriminatory attitudes of whites Certainly didn't get it. We don't See that they've always been there and they're always going to be That they're always they are there And we know from name things and so on that's a certain fraction, but we're talking about a wide Or worse and I I find that hard to believe in the race modern society operates that um So we made out of eliminated Got it down down more and this isn't this is a worsening and that's again the depressing I'll for a few other suggestions they add to the Both the policy and the analysis I want to throw this out to the to the panel. Um All the folks on the panel if you there's been a lot of talk in this election season about the sort of It would suggest that blacks are still paid less than their white counterparts Have we in the media been missing? This conversation has there been an over And not enough focused on these sorts of economic issues that are affecting Um black americans in particular, but I would imagine they also extend to black and and other minority Latinos for example So the way I think about this is from There's canary Which argues that if you want to know the health of american democracy, all you have to do is look at the plight of black people And go institution through institution, whether it's voting rights or No from that parable the miners canary Miners would take canary into the coal mines with them because their lungs were so tiny that if there were toxic gases When the canary died the miners knew to get Our democracy you can make the same argument Around the labor market and so it's not surprising to me all the data in this paper Around what's happened to black workers and as well as the gender Democracy of the labor market look at black women in particular And we'll understand what's potentially happening to everybody So the wage disparities we see the wage stagnation we see Happening to black workers over this time. It's not surprising. They've happened to all workers It's white people too in the sense so None of the none of the the paper is in And Valerie and bill are to be commended on this incredible work. It's depressing But it's not surprising. Unfortunately that what we're seeing is has that's occurred with black workers has also And um the movement yeah, sorry go ahead and One of the reasons why we chose this the the technique that we used Um called this wage decomposition Or that it allows us to distinguish between Horrible which we attribute to discrimination or other um things that that we are not able to measure but they differ by race and This the the portion that we believe is it's due to just the fact that Right waging the call And then point two is that the sort of typical Median or mean black wage is let's say at the 35th or 40 40 percentile of the white distribution and What that means in is that as overall income inequality worsened right Over worsened it had a greater effect and it helped a great creator expand the black white wage because a larger percentage or a larger share of of african-america All right And so we and so we're able to be able to you know give you a sort of an estimate of how much is Due to just this general phenomena Right of growing income inequality of wages stagnating Versus how much of its race specific Last night we saw the Wonder if anyone on the panel has any thoughts about Whether or not this issue was Addressed at all and though there was a little bit of criticism about the lack of focus on poverty Like I like to call it the race question that comes up in in every debate You know given these numbers and given what you all heard last night Where do you do you think there needs to be more focus on on poverty and wage growth where the candidate's addressing it last Had an actual plan I wouldn't even go to plan. I would just start off with just conceptualizing and thinking about The problem secretary clinton. I think falls into it One of the key messages in this paper and that And I made in my version for my dissertation and richard and john made and their version And I and I let off with my comments here is that You know, I've spoken of you know, the african-american community Right, you know, it's african-americans And if you want to be even more precise, it's african-americans and the communities in which they live To me, that's That's the starting point we have to Of and I'm not going to mention who but but Have to do a better job of All right, thinking about You know the framework in which you're which discussing The other piece is Hugh price former president of natural urban league. He said something wonderful right when he was Or it's happened he's half full And that we know what we need to do I mean along with what we listed up here. There are other things we know in to do It's now it's it's coming it comes back to the what's the political will And then also the reframing that instead I think are guilty of Of the following instead of framing the conversation as a conversation around Can we afford it? I put my old school board had member had on build a budget of need Budget of need for us and then figure out how you're going to fund it Don't yeah, I'm sorry something there So my impression of last night's debate and often when we hear issues of race come up in in political conversation Is that often the Injustice social inequality side of it and that's definitely important. I understand why that gets more attention because you know with Everyone has a cell phone camera now Uh the proliferation of social media. These are things that are easy to capture in an image and to put on Tell Yeah, you know, that's clearly unfair. That's racist. That's biased I think we tend to get less substantive conversation about the economic inequality economic injustice Because what I like to say, I mean it's not really a Quality, uh, you know the kind of research that we do here Well the research that you know, economists do sociologists do is essentially the body camera for economic inequality because we don't You know, we can't capture Fine details and things that you have to sort of pin things down and then say, okay All of the reasons that you would give for why there should be an economic Disparity here We've held all those things constant and we're still looking at a 20 percent You know, what else could it be here? The only other thing that all these workers have in common Well, not the only other thing but the biggest Factor that these workers still have in common is race So that clearly is a factor and I I think that On economic inequality as it relates to the role of race Because it is something that's Harder to see or prove or even know when we talk about the availability of of data and information on just You know, what other people are being paid and But but Valerie then why to accept that Those pay the pay differences we see between we see between men and women that that's that's discrimination Yeah, and that's another part of that I think that's another important question that you know, we started out with here. Why did why does that get more Play than the racial That that's discrimination, right because I think there is you know, we go back to attitudes and biases I think you know, there is some assumption that you know black workers aren't shouldn't be paid as much They they aren't as highly qualified aren't as capable I For a minute the um What I thought was missing in the the race question um, was Any mention of black lives matter Um, particularly today On gun control and all of these other which I you know, not even sure that should have been part of that conversation But the movement for black lives has evolved From when I was on the ground in Ferguson to today There is a plan. There are policy expecting we The the economic justice portion of the movement for black lives policy agenda I'm curious if you can tell us a little bit about what some of those points are Could I answer the previous question first because um, and I don't want to talk about the debate all day, but debate formats Both on the republican side well in the donald trump since it's just black people are criminals and we need law and order But even in the democratic primaries if you notice when race came up Whether it was bernie sanders or hillary clinton. It was still about black people And Right, it's either their criminals need to be locked up or we need to deal with mass incarceration And black workers disappear And what didn't come up were questions around this is to bill's point about how institutions matter So if we take the eoc for instance The trend we saw the declining racial wage gap ends around 1980 and two things happen in the 80s Reagan's president he appoints a conservative group of folks at the eoc including clarence thomas Who then retreat from enforcing the civil rights act in the last 30 years of supreme court? appointments The court is now right. There's a conservative majority in the court which is attacked remedies Using the civil rights act right in title seven in particular around employment discrimination including by the way around gender if you think of the And said no even though there are 1.2 million women that can Show a disparate impact of discrimination. You can't prove it So I think we need part of what and I'll come to the movement for black lives policy platform, but even there and I think all of us are I think a mid 20th century range of tools to combat combat employment discrimination And we need to reimagine What are the tools in the 21st century and what I mean by that is I was sort of joking about the body cameras, but not really because And what and what you're showing with the unobservables we actually do have observational data in a sense We have field experiments Right, so we have audit studies or field experiments. We send testers in the field Whites and blacks white men black men white women black women Actually prove discrimination and it usually takes place in one of three ways One there's just in the first initial hiring process Who gets a callback who doesn't who gets an interview who doesn't who gets a job offer who doesn't Secondly is something called job channeling. So Jobs are back of the house jobs if you work at a restaurant or a hotel for instance And then last the third way the third mechanism arguably is Do you get the same wages for the same job description if we could put body cameras on workers Action in some way Right, I mean that but nonetheless we have that we have the the experimental data the field experiments That really shows and I think even more so than Survey data how discrimination occurs today, but we don't Have to see that as a discrimination. Let me say just a quick word on the movement for black lives Social movements in this country historically Do two things they put issues on the agenda that wouldn't be in the agenda And they create the political will for a new policy enactment And it's doing it beyond just police and state violence and vigilante violence There is a robust economic agenda Including I think everything that you put up the right to organize and collectively bargain so another example In fact that we need to update for the 21st century If you think of federal state jobs programs Guarantee living wage all of these things are in the policy platform of the movement for black lives That's a very robust economic agenda that I think In order for something to gain political will given the sort of political conversation I mentioned earlier around working class whites Does do policy initiatives have to benefit To be will they not get the political support if they're race specific Richard The first chart that Valerie put up which was the productivity game And then the incomes That the Share of the national income that goes to workers has been falling So now you're thinking of workers black white men women Smaller and smaller larger share going to the people who own capital and If they they do badly in the the wage and things they do worse in terms of ownership of capital So it's even more uneven there But if you take that that number it was like 60 percent And I thought experiment to me was Race neutral policy whereby everybody had risen their wages their wages rose by 60 percent um Versus a policy that reduced the black white difference by five percent which would would run People much better off than the five percent So so I I think one of the themes I took from the from the report and that's starting comment was the The the first biggest thing Is to get everybody and then You know, whatever we can do special For to close the gaps, but what has harmed the living standards of everybody has been the fact that the Wages haven't kept pace with productivity Cutting of the The race differences that would benefit a black worker as much as having had a Growth of wages at the same rate as productivity. That's 60 So that you have a very sharp I think thing that came from this report I read that first chart which just said the first order of priority has to be To deal with the broad problem of workers not The inequality among workers This bill points out if you're in the 35th or 40th percentile There's no you don't need any extra rate extra, you know, race discrimination issues. You just fall behind the the people The people of other ethnicities who are in the 35th everybody in the 35th suffers so That's that's the way I read that evidence and the report And I wanted to when I'm speaking about race specific policies, I think not to get too far away from For now since tanasi codes, you know wrote about the case for reparations We've been having this conversation now. Is that I mean Dory and you've spoken about that Is that even something that can become a realistic part of this if we're recently Talked about the resistant often to workplace Diversity programs. I can't imagine reparations gaining much much steam Have to look at the data or look at paid data How do we even begin to get political will for something like reparations? That question The idea that we didn't think we could create political will for or progressive taxation or direct election of senators Or there are a range of issues that seemed impossible that then became possible Platform one of the causes to is for the conures bill. He's introduced for the last what 40 years to even study the idea Which seems harmless to me, right? Just the study. That's what we do I mean, there are a couple. I mean my take on this is it's interesting to me number one We don't have as much of a hang up around gender Conscious or gender neutral policies as we do around race conscious versus race neutral policies I tend to think it's a note improv We need race neutral policies On the one hand increasing worker bargaining power. That's race neutral. It would help black workers tremendously We know that the data is clear on that But on the other hand, I just like trickle down economics doesn't help most workers. I don't think trickle down And I think in some cases and then I think this varies by geography as well We might need a targeted policy approach in the Midwest. That's different from the south. That's different from silicon valley That's different from dc or the east coast. So Not having not saying everything should be race neutral or everything should be race conscious But where does it right? What are the conditions in a particular place and what are the remedies required? to address the racial wage gaps to address the gender wage gaps and Both the racial and gender wage gaps. I think of You know the old saying if all you have in your toolbox is the hammer everything looks like a nail I don't think that's going to address the gender and racial wage gaps if we're just using the same flat policy. So I think In particular places what remedies do we need to address certain labor market patterns? And the Midwest and the south etc We're heading into In the next couple of decades People of color will be the majority of people in this country Collectively, there will be more women of color than white women in this country What impact does this have if this continues What impact will this have? National I think when we look at the the trends in in growing inequality particularly when we Consider that you know women of color tend to be on the lowest end of the totem pole when we look at these inequalities and Given some of the the facts that you just mentioned I mean it A problem for women is no longer just the problem for people of color Women overall are Half of the population So even if we're not looking adding on the additional special disadvantage If you know half of the population is being underpaid that has Surely an impact on the overall health of our economy I think too often we talk about these issues as if oh, that's a women's issue. That's Latinos Without, you know the realization that we all make up America And are all a part of the american economy To me is just Out of everybody in this country Yeah, I think I agree with Valerie that that this And I'll go even if I think a little further that this has implications for our competitiveness You know as a nation That paid pay gap these pay gaps and have a good chunk of them are due to discrimination There are emotional That that that that impact and the impact in the impact communities So which then leads to You know less pro lower productivity Um, and then if you take as the race specific Jersey I'm doing some work with I'm on a volunteer board member On our one of our regional united ways and we've been doing work on what we call alice where alice stands for asset limited income constrained employed and basically it's another way of thinking about Where they are at or below this alice threshold where they can't they just they cannot afford And they don't have the resources to be able to Uh, sort of have a have this basic standard living to what it costs to live in their county And a disproportionate For them also are white latino, uh, asian And what that means is If we don't again address this the the issue around Our lower wages and the stagnating wages and that in that break between productivity and and It will feed into again lower productivity growth, which Feeds into economic growth All right that you know, they were seeing and we've been seeing experiencing at this recovery Uh, it's been long and expansive, but right the GDP growth, uh, and we can quibble about how Proxy has been very tepid at best so And so the so the so the challenge is I think really coming back to I think I said earlier is is And for me, it's really butchers by this work on alice that we're doing Is we talk about how you know these low low wages Are the challenges that these households face? What are they? What's the impact on the household itself? But we also then talk about how does affects the community How does this affect the state? We also need to do a better job as researchers And policy analysts is make sure that we're really connecting the dots for people and and and taking these what appear to be It's just affects one one one group one one That connects to right to to economic growth and then as I said, if you have half of your population or you have your workforce that is uh um getting paid less for doing for time That that erodes confidence that are at has had psychological effects Um and hence, you know will will impact our our ability to compete And a lot of um just to sort of bring it full circle and then I want to open it up to the audience When we look at um some of the high profile shootings and killings that we've seen over the past um Two years at least um, we know that in no city That any of these has taken place Likely to be employed Then whites so whites are consistently actually we're we're coming out with a chart later on today where I look at On cnn money where we look at the last five cities. So charlotte. We look at tulsa And we look at milwaukey and sort of explain Ratios are and then what the employment ratios are comparing comparing whites to blacks and whites consistently make double And have half the rate of unemployment that blacks do. So there's something happening nationally at this level and We're seeing it Looking class black Communities right these shootings are not living in a an economic free bubble, right? Would you agree? Yeah Um, so I want to have one right here and then we'll get to you go ahead So I wanted to I'm a loud talker. Um, so I wanted to I'm sorry. Thank you dorian nicky dickerson von locket, uh, penn state university Nations um department and and so I've been Looking at work and workers and so I wanted to bring a sociological view to some of the some of the analyses So the discrimination piece. So just taught on this to my race and gender employment class this week about thinking Bias the way we've traditionally thought about it versus what what academics call typically institutional discrimination Which I think we can think which we broadening the idea of thinking about not just discrimination but thinking about exclusion and advantage or disadvantage So I say that Whereas a lot so the audit studies that that dorian talked about Um, and a lot of the things that your tanzina that you've brought up in terms of what happens in workplaces The art so that's one piece of the puzzle and that's showing up in some of the in some of the um in some of the analyses But it's occurring before we get to workplaces, right? People have got so what we still have these wide disparities disparities in unemployment, right that Issues around so for example word of mouth recruiting. This is this is right. This is this these are race neutral I always say to and I always Practice it has no intention to discriminate. It's to reduce cost economists think about this as Incentives for organizations, right? There's an incentive to make money not an incentive to discriminate But those incentives oftentimes can disadvantage or exclude women minorities Think about those and I love the body cam. I love the body cam for for not just the workplace for the labor market So so I want to widen some of these to think about or bill talked about social capital We also use this idea of social networks, right that we're workers share information About job openings private employers don't have And so but but they often that information is shared among social networks social networks are segregated by by race ethnicity by space where we live Um, so I wanted to bring some of those things to discuss. I think that's a critical thing that you're bringing up I mean, I feel like the um Conversation at least as it relates to media is something that I Constantly talking about the lack of diversity and inclusion and in media To your point, I think, you know, and I've written about these issues Culture fit is a big reason why You know, if you're often people tend to hire people who look like them went to the same schools as they did Is this whole conversation we're having about implicit bias and and unconscious bias Power structures tend to replicate themselves, right? So often when you have and you see this a lot of media and I'm sure, you know in other industries as well Um, but we've seen it quite a bit of me People leave from one outlet They'll you know, the the hierarchy will sort of move and then they'll bring You know the second and command the third and command So they replicate power structures at the very highest levels Which then makes it difficult to penetrate because if I let's say worked at cbs and I'm not saying, you know I've not worked for either of those places Um, and I bring all my my former cbs folks with me It's obviously it's going to have that difficult, you know, if you haven't gotten in that group It's going to be difficult to penetrate and the third thing I think happens is something I call assignment equity Um, you know once you're in the I think a lot of media Organizations stop there and I'm sure a lot of other organizations stop there What types of assignments are we giving different people of color where what are the assignments the women are getting? What are the assignments, you know journalists of color? I ask all the time who? The you know the science reporters the business reporters. Um, not just metro Which is great, but I I was a metro reporter myself But how much, you know assignment equity are we seeing across the board? So to your point the question I think Nailed something absolutely correct It's it's the connections that people have and then what's the policy that we can do for this I actually don't think the government's going to be too much involved it has to be through the communities and and and I know in the in the area of the college graduates and particularly ph So you are connected by your supervisor and other people and If you're a minority person Or a woman you you may have weaker connections and links and we know that Both of them always one through money and one through presidency That certainly furthered their career. So so what what what do you do to do this? You need I would think may perhaps Black matters lives matter. Maybe you need people to have mentors outside of the That we do have some programs for underrepresented Undergraduates to get some mentoring from faculty more connected Who then can help the people's careers? The policy here It's hard to see what a government they could give money for some programs in that area So just connect people up and the earlier you connect them. I think the more beneficial the whole thing Operates like one other comment on the and if It's not a question of the people who are incarcerated It's that a lot of young black men will come with it with a bit of a criminal record And that just kills off their job chances the the data Of the same way it does whites so it's not that the Floor the floor is already against the You know not not as favorable to the black workers in the audience But if they come in it'll reduce their chances by one half of getting a call back The same reduction it does among whites. That's they're sort of applying the same That has to matter something where you you say no The person yes committed a crime when he was a young Jerk He's now 25 30 years old doesn't affect black women at all And now they've got some Done this historically saying this guy's a good guy Maybe he needs there where you need a stronger program Or some be it public or private To have these people connected in in a way. So if I say this young man hearings Good guy And I'm putting my review Like the young person He's not going to want to be destructive to whoever is attesting for him And and gets people this link because without getting those those links the family background Stuff is just going to so Keep people from from from improving the way they should and getting the kinds of Policy for people with criminal records the ban the box legislation that's sort of making its way Around the country there are some cities that have signed on to not ask the incarceration question until I believe there's been an offer of employment made. So there's some things that can be done. But again and in hard Out these diverse city initiatives don't work. There's a lot of resistance to to them Um Internally and and organizationally and often people feel forced. They don't want to feel like they have to Um, you know higher outside of the the culture fit. So that presents a a more subtle, but I think different We want to hire outside his group if he I'm saying it's he probably If he is a mentor to somebody else he suddenly that person becomes part of his group it is much harder to to say no Person out there that's trying to force Force me to hire as opposed to somebody. I know and this occurs among, you know, college alumni he's it occurs, you know in the black community the alumni from the from the historically black colleges favor Uh, so it's a human trait. You want to somehow to use in a positive way to open doors Instead of to close doors Yeah, I mean the american economic association for I guess we're now on what probably into close to 40 years Has has run a mentoring program The the folks who were directing it and the AA I remember got nervous because when When the when all when some of the college initiatives around race and diversity were challenged You know, there was no direct challenge to this small little program that goes to a university Each summer and brings in depending upon the budget 20 to 30 kids You know, they got worried about, you know getting uh having a lot having a lawsuit So here's an example again where where the institutions matter and you don't even have to have a formal you don't even have to have a formal formal Formal Lost it or formal I got got very nervous. Um I love what nicky said About the the networks, but that's one of the things that I've I've been doing and have done He's also been trying to because he was because basically with these the beyond the man that richard's talking about You know There is this Desire like I don't want to hire them All right So one of the things that I did at the college when mary before I left and now i'm working with the institute for social justice on a project on a work workforce project in newark is We're trying to show so William and mary. I showed that when you're paying your Landscapers and housekeepers All right, seven bucks an hour six bucks an hour for in some cases for decades Um Our employees who have low morale Who are unhealthy? And and and and hence Right, you uh, you're not getting you know the productivity to effort from these people It's not great. And then when you raise those wages and prove those Successfully we built a business case. We showed that that in the occupations that we were paying Um below market. We had to hide those had the highest turnover rates. Those had the greatest, uh Sort of attrition um and and and and the employer are Administrators they were they they got that we project There we're i'm trying to get some of our our our uh anchor companies to allow us to do a similar kind of analysis um, but we're also trying to build this case of And you get back to something you asked earlier where you started giving the demography of Of these various groups, right? I haven't Has a potentially a buying power of about 4.2 billion dollars You know, it's probably half that because their unemployment rates are much higher I'm trying to figure out how to how to weight it but I want to take that 4.2 billion is that's potentially what you could do and then link it to link it link with link All right or i'm able to break out that 4.2 and the different types of commodities and and so if Universities see that a good chunk of that buying power is an education you now have People on in on their platform. So it's a so not something to to It would be something to compliment what nicky was saying because I do agree that it is about the men I have over my career. I've come to weigh it. I don't use mentor anymore. I use advocates That people need advocates My sociologist, uh, I vote the book um sundown towns about the most egregious Discrimination we we still have perhaps Um, I have a question for miss wilson. Uh, it's straight out of the paper um figure in if you want to look at it maybe Unobservables and your observables and that's very interesting Um, but I wish you'd walk me through a little bit on figure in because some figure in Almost throughout the figure certainly the the last four last three bars, especially the Behaving in one way and the unobservables are behaving in the opposite way And if you could just walk me through that then I would understand it better and I bet I'm not the only person with this problem So again, uh, that's similar to the the graphs that I showed you earlier that had I can sort of see the visual of what we're talking about um And even in this case there's one where you see observables on the top so these What the overall bars measuring is the change in the gap Okay, so the gap can over expand Even the factors that contribute to your wages aren't necessarily moving in the same direction So you could have done things that Would have narrowed the gap education being of one of the the best examples There are periods when the education gap is narrowing That would have served to narrow the measured wage gap If it were not for these other factors working against that So in many cases in in different periods of time, we see that this unobservable or discrimination growing inequality portion of it actually Erasing any gains that people would have made by their own efforts of increasing education Or other things like that see like the two Directions, you know that Factor of that, you know, these other factors are just having a much larger impact on wages than what people individually could do Thanks, that helps, but my particular question is with the furthest right thing on figure n in which the unobservables are decreasing it looks to me like they're decreasing the gap while the Observables are increasing again. So that would be kind of the opposite of what you just said somehow something bad is happening in education Or some other of your observables while meanwhile Let's say straight racism if that's the most important unobservable seems to be decreasing right So again this so the just so everyone knows what we're talking about this figure that he's looking at is for Experienced men. So this is the group that would be this older group Um bill mentioned that, you know, some of the things that we see over time is that you know gaps have widened for this group as well But to some extent they're From some of the broader macroeconomic shifts the other thing that I would point out on this graph is that the Overall change Is really small. So essentially Not in this period because it's 2007 to 2015 Like that negative point three is essentially no change So in that instance We don't really see like a measured difference in the wage gap You know, that's an insignificant statistically insignificant change Maybe moving in opposite directions, but The way that we would measure or identify the change that happened in that period was essentially that the gap was Pretty flat. And so those factors are stored Completely wiping each other out Yeah I think we have time for one more quick question Right here in the front. Mr. Rogers if I read your statement To go the south the south had this huge gap against the rest of the country Including a huge racial wage gap Basically the south the state flat and everybody else is declined Is it would that be a bit and come down to that level god forbid? Yeah, it was that I think that's the correct statement before we started and richard larry and I and valory. We're talking about how That instead of labor policy that was a say in the midway dominating Instead of helping to either keep wages up or draw wages up in the south That I think we concluded They can speak with themselves, but I I took from our conversation that an actuality what's happened over time is probably the labor policies Have now have spread to these other other high wage reasons I mean I mean richard, you know richard did have been jumped in the side of wisconsin Right, that's being an example of a state that had been viewed as being pretty progressive But uh, cool that would mean, you know, that's has How do we change that? Well, I think It's it is it's a it's a combination of all the the The thoughts that have been raised niki's, you know, bringing us to getting us to Social networks and in how and how, you know, uh, within within workplaces, you know, people advocate for each other and and support each other And what dorian was, you know, bringing up in terms of some of the issues Race neutral And so that and seeing how black lives matter is what you're saying that, you know, they've expanded that that conversation And then I think also, you know topping it off with some of the things that valory and I You know have have suggested and I think I know richard To do them my profit sharing your work you've done And and and zena she's You know mentioned and so I think this is I was I sure at the beginning of my my formal remarks was That this is the first paper to kind of lay out the new dimensions of what the what what the gaps are and And that the next work, uh, larry in the back Next work should be a bigger piece right that really, you know integrates all these ideas and others together For the next president We'll see who that's going to be in a couple of weeks. Um, thank you to our panel to valory And thank you for being here