Schooling Doesn’t Close Minority Earning Gap : Salaries: Whites earn more at all levels, challenging belief that education is the key to parity, data shows.

Whether they have dropped out of high school or invested years in a graduate degree, whether they have struggled to master English or not, California’s minorities earn substantially less than Anglos--a disparity that challenges the long-held tenet that education is a key to equality.

In fact, the gap between Anglo and minority earnings widens among some of the most educated Californians, a Times analysis of new census statistics shows. Although all workers earn more if they stay in school, the return on investment is substantially larger for Anglos.

The bachelor’s degree that, on average, adds more than $17,000 to a typical Anglo’s pay is worth less than $12,500 to the average African-American. And the professional credential that boosts a college-educated Anglo’s salary by about $33,000 a year is worth less than half that to the average Latino--even if he or she is born in the United States.

Moreover, in this most diverse of states, there appears to be no automatic financial advantage in being bilingual. Indeed, the data shows that Latinos and Asian-Americans earn more overall if they only speak English.

Based on 1989 wages and salaries, the census data showed that Asian-Americans are closest to parity with Anglos statewide, followed by African-Americans and Latinos. For every dollar earned by Anglos working full time, their Asian-American colleagues made 82 cents, their African-American counterparts averaged about 74 cents and their Latino co-workers brought in 59 cents.

There were a few fields in which minorities led the way--Latino psychologists, were the best paid in their profession, as were African-American carpenters and Asian-American nurses. Still, the full-time work force and the top of the pay scale were dominated by whites, virtually across the board.

The income gap among ethnic groups has long been documented here and nationwide. Although national figures comparable to The Times’ data are not available, the closest available U.S. statistics also show African-Americans and Latinos lagging, but place Asian-Americans roughly even with Anglos.

Most experts attribute the bulk of the disparity to differences in experience, age, training and English fluency. Overtime and moonlighting play a part, as does gender: The gap among women of various ethnic backgrounds is much narrower here and nationally than that among men, although Anglos consistently come out on top.

Also key are the occupations in which people are concentrated and the niches they occupy within their professions. California’s Anglos are about three times more likely than Latinos to be executives or managers, the census data shows. But Anglos are only one-sixth as likely to be domestics.

Consequently, more than 70% of California’s Latino workers are earning less than $20,000 a year, while fewer than half of the state’s Anglos fall into that bottom bracket.

However, according to census data, the pay gap persists even when age, education, language skills and hours are taken into account.

For example, an Anglo older than 36 with a master’s degree, a workweek of 35 to 48 hours, and only one language--English--averaged $50,705 in 1989. But Asian-Americans with the same age, qualifications and workweek averaged $1,218 a year less. Latinos averaged $4,039 a year less.

If the worker was African-American, the disparity was $8,903--enough money, say, to buy your teen-ager a new compact car.

At every level of education, Anglos also out-earned minorities, the data shows. And while the gap overall tended to narrow slightly with education, some of the biggest disparities were among doctors, lawyers and other professionals who have spent years in school.

Latino high school dropouts averaged 63 cents for every dollar earned by Anglo dropouts in 1989. But among Latino professionals the disparity was even greater, at 53 cents per Anglo dollar.

Even when immigrants were removed from the picture, and the comparisons were among people who only speak English, Latino dropouts were still earning only 75 cents on an Anglo dollar, and Latino professionals only about 66 cents.

Figures such as these, experts say, underscore the high cost of discrimination and racism. Whether minorities hit a glass ceiling at a crucial point in their careers, or simply expect less of themselves, they are continuing to earn less than their white counterparts for reasons that cannot be chalked up to merit.

“You’re still looking at the old boys’ network and discrimination,” said J. Eugene Grigsby III, director of the UCLA Center for Afro-American Studies. “That system is alive and well.”

But sociologist Donald J. Treiman, who has researched income difference among Los Angeles ethnic groups, also said financial limitations, such as the lack of capital, typically handicaps even the most highly educated minorities.

“If you don’t have the money to set up your own medical practice, you’re likely to go into a salaried job offering less money,” he said.

Societal constraints are only part of the picture, experts say. Sociologist Jorge R. Sanchez, for one, believes minorities’ incomes also may be held back by lower career expectations.

Sanchez--co-author of a 1992 study that tracked the economic performance of 13,000 minority students in California community colleges--found that many Latino college students “are the first in their families to participate in higher education.”

“In their eyes, they’re a success already. They don’t necessarily need to make as much money as their Anglo counterparts to feel like a success,” Sanchez said.

Moreover, he and others say, oppressed people often internalize the erroneous belief that the top jobs are beyond the capabilities of people like them.

“How many Hispanics dream about becoming the governor of California?” Sanchez asked. “I’m sure it’s not as many as in the dominant white population.”

In everyday life, the factors that lead an employer to pay one worker more than another can be as unique as the special culture of each factory and business.

Consider the office of Stephen Ong, 27, a Silicon Valley software programmer.

According to the census, computer programmers of Ong’s ethnicity are almost--but not quite--at parity with similarly situated Anglos, who were typically earning $40,561 a year in 1989. Programmers such as Ong were averaging 98% of that.

Told of the discrepancy, Ong was at first surprised. He thought Asian-American programmers would have easily come out on top because there are so many of them in his office. Then two things came to mind: The ethnicity of his supervisors, and the office mate who was born in Hong Kong and has not fared well.

“My direct supervisor is an Asian woman,” said the programmer, who has spent five years at a major high-tech corporation. “And above her, it goes--let’s see . . . white male . . . white male . . . white male. . . .”

He then wondered aloud whether the Asian-American average reflected in the census data might have been reduced by the lower earning power of programmers who are foreign-born. In his office, he said, there is a programmer who was born in Hong Kong and who constantly has problems with his supervisor.

The census data reflects the potential for such problems among workers who speak English as a second language. Asian-American and Latinos across the board earn less if English is their second language, even if they speak it well.

Even so, ethnicity continued to influence pay--so much, in fact, that according to the census data, a bilingual Latino in his peak earning years could have acquired a two-year associate of arts degree and still be taking home $427 less a year than a bilingual Anglo who had dropped out of high school.

Sociologist Treiman and others say this points to a clear bottom line: It is the assimilated who get ahead.

“If you have a strong Spanish accent, it’s unlikely you’ll be hired by a posh law firm,” Treiman said.

“The highest-paying jobs in any occupation go to the ones who have the most polished presentations of themselves in mainstream terms. . . . There’s a lot of discrimination by employers that has to do with playing it safe.”

Some minority workers contend that there is a lot of discrimination, period. It may not be as clear-cut as it used to be, they say, but many still believe that their earnings and careers have been jeopardized by white supervisors who cannot see past their ethnicity.

Even the most highly educated and successful professionals feel the effects. Take Carlos E. Garcia, 41, a market researcher raised on Los Angeles’ Eastside.

He holds an MBA and was educated at Pomona College, UC Berkeley and the Sorbonne. Yet time after time when he went looking for marketing research jobs, the only firms willing to hire him were those specializing in Latino-related research.

The one time Garcia got a job at a general market research firm, he was assigned to bring in Latino business.

Three years ago, Garcia formed his own firm in North Hollywood, and today he said he is profiting from his specialty in Latino-related research.

“It’s been an opportunity in some ways. Hispanic marketing is a growth field,” he said. “But on the other hand, I’ve been pigeonholed. You know, there’s a feeling that I’m Hispanic, so all I can do is Hispanic market research.”

Being typecast is not necessarily a disadvantage, but it can hurt in some occupations. Minority workers often say they are pushed into certain types of jobs, such as customer relations, that are intended to take advantage of their ethnicity, but offer less chance for advancement.

But perhaps the chief concern of many minority workers is the perception that they have to work twice as hard as their white colleagues--and be twice as pleasant to work with--to get ahead at all.

“You hear a (negative) story today about a black, Latino or Asian manager, and next month they’re gone. And if you hear a story about a white manager, five years later they’re still there, or promoted,” said Thomas W. Garland, 50, an African-American administrator who is retiring this month as director of facilities for the county-run Olive View Medical Center in Sylmar.

Garland said he is retiring after 25 years with the county partly because of professional obstacles he has faced because of his race. After directing construction crews around the clock for months to finish construction of the Olive View facility on time in 1987, Garland said he was promised a raise and a promotion.

Instead, he said, he got a free lunch, “like on a plantation.”

Garland, who holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering and draws a base salary of $88,000, said he is considering going into business as a consultant or attending law school after leaving his county job.

But he doesn’t want to go back to working for someone else, at either a big or small company.

“I don’t want to be hired because they need me to meet some quota,” Garland said.

Labor economist Paul Ong (no relation to the computer programmer) said such biases--real or perceived--are costly not only to minority workers, but to the entire economy.

He noted that an increasing number of Asian-American scientists and engineers are using the United States purely as a place to get an education. Concerned that they cannot move up in an Anglo-dominated corporate culture, they take their degrees--and their talent--back to Asia when it is time to make their careers.

“There’s a lot of talk about cultural sensitivity in Los Angeles, and about this being a multicultural society,” he said.

“But I have a hard time believing we will ever achieve a just and sensitive and multicultural society without dealing with these deeply embedded racial inequalities.”

Statistics for this story were compiled by Times Director of Computer Analysis Richard O’Reilly and statistical analyst Maureen Lyons.

How the Study Was Done

The Times’ study was based on newly released Census Bureau data for California known as the public use microdata sample. It contains the responses of 1,456,011 persons completing the detailed long form of the census questionnaire. That form was mailed to about one of every six residences nationwide.

Full-time workers were defined as those who reported working at least 48 weeks in 1989 and typically worked 35 or more hours a week.

The overall sampling error for the study is less than 1%.

Pay Gap

Latinos, who make up the largest minority group in California, made about 59% of what Anglos earned annually in 1989.

Average Full-Time Pay Anglos: $36,468 Latinos*: $21,423 Asians: $30,027 Blacks: $26,898 NOTE: When part-time workers are included, the relative pay differences are nearly identical: Latinos make 58% of what Anglos do, Asians 83% and blacks 75%.

*

Top Five Job Groups

Here are full-time average earnings for the five occupational groups with the most workers in the state, along with minorities’ percentage of Anglos’ pay.

GROUP Anglos Latinos % of Asians % of Blacks % of Anglo Anglo Anglo pay pay pay Executives, $47,109 $32,151 68% $38,711 82% $33,064 70% managers Clerical, $24,388 $20,840 85% $22,969 94% $23,255 95% admin. support Sales $39,822 $23,871 60% $30,109 76% $27,079 68% Machine $27,681 $16,732 60% $19,520 71% $25,030 90% operators Engineers, $47,419 $39,980 84% $44,218 93% $39,766 84% scientists

*

The Labor Force

Here is a breakdown of the 8.8 million employed full time in California: Anglos: 5,468,828 Latinos*: 1,889,768 Asians: 809,026 Blacks: 575,853 * Latinos can be of any race

Source: Analysis of U.S. Census data by Richard O’Reilly and Maureen Lyons / Los Angeles Times

The Education Factor

At every level of education, Anglos who work full time in California out-earn those in other ethnic groups:

Educational level Anglo Latino* Black Asian No high school diploma $26,115 $16,487 $21,678 $18,517 High school diploma $27,376 $21,121 $22,040 $21,608 Bachelor’s degree $44,426 $33,817 $34,290 $33,758 Master’s degree $52,787 $41,431 $42,254 $45,550 Doctorate $59,348 $46,873 $54,205 $53,792 Professional degree** $77,877 $41,029 $61,015 $59,603

* Latinos can be of any race

** Includes medical and law degrees

Source: Analysis of U.S. Census data by Richard O’Reilly and Maureen Lyons / Los Angeles Times