Nonemployment of Black Men in Major Metropolitan Areas.

This article focuses on a study, which examines the extent of non-employment among black males across 64 metropolitan areas in 1980, testing social scientist Albert Szymanski's thesis of functional substitutability of women and black workers in the post-World War II period. Evidence is presented to show that black male non-employment is partially the result of increased white female employment. The paper concludes with the suggestion that in the United States labor displacement in the post-World War II economy has worked cross-genderly when race is taken into account. The U.S. economy has changed, moving from the production of goods to the production of services. Many of the job losses associated with this shift have been in the manufacturing sector. However, the decline in manufacturing employment has not proceeded evenly. The shift in manufacturing has reduced employment opportunities for unskilled and semi-skilled white males and has led to a serious erosion of white working class male employment during the 1970's and 1980's. The results indicate that black males have competed with white females for employment during the postwar period, supporting Szymanski's finding of functional substitutability between the two groups, as well as racial variants of labor market que theory.