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In a classic study of racial segregation within the US labor force entitled “The Effect on White Incomes of Discrimination in Employment.” economist Barbara Bergmann, found that Black men were more concentrated in laborer and low skill occupations than their white counterparts and virtually excluded from high status occupations (Bergmann. 1971). In a follow up study “Revisiting Occupational Crowding in the United States: A Preliminary Study “ Gibson, Darity and Myers found similarly high levels of occupational crowding in some blue-collar occupations, high levels of gender segregation in the occupational distribution and under-representation of Blacks in high status/wage occupations. Gibson, et al used regional data from the 1990 US Census to analyze occupational crowding among 59 occupations in Detroit, Michigan and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The regional focus captures many of the localized aspects of each region’s labor market that are obscured with national level data. This study builds upon the previous two by utilizing the same crowding index and similar regional data to evaluate Black occupational patterns in Portland, Oregon and the Seattle, Washington in 2000. This study finds that occupational segregation persists in the new millennium, as there were similarly high levels of occupational in some blue collar occupations, high degrees of occupational sex segregation and underrepresentation of Blacks in high wage/status occupations in both Portland and Seattle. However, Black men and women in Seattle had significantly higher levels of representation in healthcare and clerical occupations. Black men in Portland were slightly better represented in skilled crafts occupations than Black men in Seattle. Introduction Although African Americans have made considerable economic gains since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s, racial economic inequality has persisted and has in some ways worsened. In the 1970's, economist Barbara Bergmann, interested in the underlying dynamics which perpetuate racial inequality, focused on employment discrimination as a leading factor. In a well known study entitled “The Effect on White Incomes of Discrimination in Employment”.(1971), Bergmann examined US Census data from 1960 to investigate the extent to which African American men were limited to restricted set of occupations. Bergman (p. 295) argued that racial discrimination in employment had led to a “crowding effect”, whereby Black men were segregated into a small number of low status occupation which resulted in lower earnings than similarly skilled White men. Gibson, Darity and Myers (1998) examined occupational crowding in Wayne County (Detroit), and Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) using an index similar to Bergmann’s (that controlled for the educational level of the worker). This study found similar levels of crowding in 1990, among some low wage blue collar occupations as well as Black underrepresentation in high paying managerial/specialty occupations. One of the study’s more notable conclusions was the degree to which racial occupational patterns in blue collar jobs had persisted between 1960 and 1990. In the current study, like Gibson, et al, I will utilize 5% Public Use Micro-data Samples (PUMS) from the US Census Bureau to analyze the extent to which African Americans are crowded into certain occupations and out of others. This data set contains detailed information regarding household and personal characteristics for individuals based on geographic area. This study utilizes regional rather than county level data from the 2000 Census for Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA’s), which in this case, represent combinations of multiple counties. The occupations analyzed in the current study are very similar* to the set used by Gibson, Darity and Myers (1998) and the crowding index is identical. This study will attempt two primary tasks: 1.) To compare occupational patterns by race in Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington 2.) To compare and contrast the results of this analysis to those found in “The Effect on White Incomes of Discrimination in Employment.”(Bergman 1971.). And, “Revisiting Occupational Crowding in the United States: A Preliminary Study “(Gibson, Darity and Myer 1998). This article is broken into five sections. In the next section I describe why Portland and Seattle provide an interesting theoretical case study and discuss the origins of the African American communities of the Pacific Northwest, highlighting economic and historical contrasts which affect the differential occupational opportunities available to African Americans in both cities. In section three I discuss the persistence of racial economic inequality in the US, review past scholarship on occupational segregation by race and gender and discuss African American access to desirable occupations. Section four consists of an overview of the study’s methodology and discussion of similar past studies. In section five I present a summary of my findings, compare my findings to past research and offer my conclusions. Why Seattle and Portland? The primary reason the Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon MSA’s were selected is because both cities reside in the relatively racially homogenous Pacific Northwest and posses small Black populations, unlike Pittsburgh and Detroit, which posses much larger Black populations. Numerous studies have linked Black population size with Black to Black-White inequality in the United States across a broad spectrum of labor market outcomes (Seymore, Hoyt and Scott 1984; Beggs 1995, Cohen 2001, Huffman and Cohen 2004). The “competition” *Occupations no longer used in PUMS 1990 occupational classification scheme: Purchasing Managers, Administrators in Protective Services, Administrators and Officials in Public Administration. Also, Maids and Housemen were omitted from the study and Boilermakers, Taxi Drivers/Chauffeurs, Garage and Service Station Attendants and Bank Tellers were added. or “visibility-discrimination” hypothesis attributes this positive association between racial concentration and inequality to a White response to the threat posed by larger minority group size (Burr, Galle and Fossett 1991, Beggs, Villemez and Arnold 1997. Huffman and Cohen 2004). The Black populations in Portland and Seattle MSA’s are small (2.6% and 4.3% respectively), which would suggest that racial employment discrimination would be less pronounced than in Pittsburgh and Detroit. However, as it relates to occupational crowding and segregation, this study corroborates Gibson et al, finding that city-city occupational patterns, in terms of gender and racial representation are unique and deeply rooted in history. The African American Communities of Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon The African American communities of Seattle and Portland arose primarily during 1940’s as Southern Blacks migrated and were recruited from across the United States to work in wartime industries. Between 1940 and 1950 Portland's African American community expanded by close to 400 percent, from 1,931 to 9,529 (Taylor 1981). Similarly, Seattle's Black population grew by over 300 percent, from 3,789 to 15,666. In Seattle, home of the Boeing Company, Black workers found employment both in aircraft and shipbuilding industries, while Blacks migrants to Portland found employment primarily in the Kaiser shipyards owned by the powerful California industrialist Henry J. Kaiser. Blacks in Seattle’s were openly welcomed into shipbuilding industries and to a lesser degree within aircraft industries so that by the end of WWII the outlook for African Americans in Seattle was promising, strengthened by the diversity in employment opportunities. In Portland, Black and White wartime workers from the South were met with open hostility and a severe shortage of housing greatly exacerbated racial tensions. In addition, Black workers in Portland also experienced severe discrimination from most local labor unions, particularly the Boilermakers Union. However, there were a few exceptions. For example, the Building Worker's Union (Local 299) had 2,000 Black members out of about 5,500 total members and the Electrical Workers Union had nearly 1,000 Black members out of a total of 8,000 (City Club of Portland 1945). Regardless, thousands of African American workers left the Portland area when ship production was curtailed at the end of the war. Some returned to the South, while others sought employment in Seattle or in California. By 1947 the number of Blacks in the PortlandVancouver area had dwindled from a high of 21,000 in 1945 to approximately 12,000 persons (Taylor 1981). Of the 4,500 blacks in the Portland labor force in 1947, only about one-third were

Occupational Crowding by Race in the Pacific Northwest: A Comparative Study of Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington