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Since the 1980s the population of Hispanics in the U.S. has growntremendously. Compared to blacks, Hispanics have a competitive advantage inthe competition for low skill jobs because of their lower reserve wage,more clearly articulated networks used for job searches and for geographicmobility, also because they are viewed positively by prospective employers,and because they have higher rates of entrepreneurship which is invoked tohire their own. We find that the successful influx of Hispanics into lowskill job markets is matched by a corresponding displacement of blacks fromthose same jobs. Our results, using 1990 and 2000 census and crime data for152 major U.S. cities, reveals that this black job displacement findsexpression in higher incidents of violence, from both an offender andvictimization standpoint. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous macro level research on the labor market / crime nexus suggests that the loss of manufacturing jobs in urban areas during the 1970s and 1980s exacerbated lethal violence by fostering concentrated disadvantage and eroding informal social control (Shihadeh and Ousey 1998; Ousey 2000). However, research in the rural milieu indicates that manufacturing firm size (i.e. number of employees) in conjunction with the number of firms plays an integral role in the attenuation of crime rates. Specifically, in rural areas, small manufacturing firms reduce both violent and property crime by increasing social cohesion and reducing the effects of socioeconomic disadvantage (Lyson and Yolbert 1996; Tolbert, Lyson, and Irwin 1998; Lee and Ousey 2001). Conversely, large manufacturing firms in rural areas have the opposite effect and actually exacerbate crime (Lee and Ousey 2001). The current research bridges these previous findings by exploring the effects of manufacturing firm size in the urban milieu. The results of our city-level analysis around the year 2000 suggest that large manufacturing firms reduce violent crime whereas small firms have no effect. However, our race specific analyses suggest that both small and large manufacturing firms reduce black violence but have no effect on white violence. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]