Ethnic Ties Help Determine Choice of Job

Have you noticed that some ethnic groups seem to be especially concentrated in certain occupations and industries? Or that ethnic groups vary in rates of government employment and self-employment?

Employment of an ethnic group in a particular type of work at a rate well above that for the general population can be called an ethnic work concentration or niche. Some people might think such concentrations occurred only in the past, when racism was blatant and most visible niches were in occupations shunned by whites. However, analyses by Cal State Northridge geography professor Eugene Turner and myself demonstrate with 1990 U.S. census data that a large number of ethnic work niches do exist, including many in positions of moderate or high income.

Why do ethnic work niches still exist? There are three major reasons. Ethnic groups still differ in their educational training and other qualifications for preferred jobs. No less important, however, is the continued existence of somewhat separate networks of personal contact in the various ethnic communities. These networks of friends and relatives inform people about work options and career goals, and they help connect people with specific jobs in which members of their group are employed. Lastly, the arrival of so many different immigrant groups has greatly expanded such networks in our region so that they are every bit as important now as they were decades ago.

Here are some highlights regarding Southern California’s modern ethnic work niches. With respect to niches in specific occupations and industries, I focus on those in which the percentage of the ethnic group employed is at least three times that for Southern Californians as a whole. (If the definition of a niche is relaxed somewhat, many more become evident, including several large, important and well-known ones associated with Mexican immigrants, such as women working as sewing-machine operators and men as kitchen assistants, groundskeepers and cooks.)

Japanese and Chinese men have niches as electrical engineers, and niches for Armenian, Iranian and Asian Indian men exist in civil engineering. Black women have niches as postal clerks and bus drivers, and there are niches for Chinese women as general administrators, aerospace and electrical engineers and computer systems analysts. The highly visible niche of Filipino women in nursing is documented by our data; but an even stronger niche among both men and women in that group is the less public one of clinical laboratory worker, where Filipinos are clustered at six times the average percentage employment in that occupation. Men and women of Russian ancestry--which we use to represent the Jewish population--have niches as lawyers and as actors and directors such that they are represented in those occupations at five times the rate for Southern Californians in general.

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Even stronger occupational niches exist. For example, Chinese women are represented as computer programmers and pharmacists at seven times the rate for women in general. Asian Indian women are physicians at 10 times the rate for all women, and Salvadoran women are private household servants at 10 times the average rate, while Vietnamese women are represented as electronics technicians at 14 times the rate for women in general.

Other types of niches are found in tendencies toward either government employment or self-employment (entrepreneurship). Of the groups we examined, black men and women are most likely to work in the public sector. For over half a century, blacks have prized such employment because it seemed less discriminatory than the private sector. There is also greater than average representation in government work among Cambodian, Jamaican, Filipino and Puerto Rican men.

Koreans (both men and women) are the most likely to be entrepreneurs or self-employed. But among men, not far behind in percentage of self-employed are people of Russian ancestry (mostly Jews), Israelis, Armenians born in Lebanon, Iranians and Taiwanese. A niche in entrepreneurship usually represents a new immigrant adaptation to economic survival in America rather than a historic cultural tradition. Nevertheless, a business heritage is probably important in explaining heightened entrepreneurship among Jews and Armenians.

A third type of niche involves ethnic concentrations in certain industries. Very strong industry niches frequently reflect the line of business among entrepreneurs in an ethnic group. The strongest niche measurable in the census data is that of Cambodians working in retail bakeries, where Cambodians in 1990 were more than 30 times more likely than Southern Californians as a whole to be operating doughnut shops. Next are two niches in which ethnic group representation is 16 times the average rate of employment in those industries: Armenian men in jewelry and Korean men in retail liquor stores.

Although these niches were proportionately very strong as of 1990, those industries were not representative of the ethnic group as a whole. This is because fewer than 9% of Cambodians worked in retail bakeries, and fewer than 4% of Armenians and Koreans worked, respectively, in the jewelry and retail liquor sales industries.

Other men’s ethnic niches in industry at proportions more than four times those of the total population are Armenians, Iranians and Asian Indians working in retail gasoline stations; Taiwanese in the wholesaling of nondurable goods; Filipinos in the U.S. Navy; Koreans in the laundry and dry-cleaning business; Samoans working in detective and protective services; and Guatemalans and Salvadorans working in parking lots and car washes. A few equally strong niches characterize both men and women: Vietnamese in the beauty shop and computer manufacturing industries, Guatemalans and Salvadorans in apparel manufacturing and blacks in the U.S. Postal Service.

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All this means that describing our regional economy simply in terms of the size, locations and types of its occupations and industries misses all the intricate social patterns that underlie the aggregate statistics. It also suggests that a goal of minority representation in each of the many occupations and industries at anything like the average rate is unrealistic.

It will be interesting to see from the 2000 census how the strength and nature of some niches have been modified as technology, the regional economy and the characteristics of ethnic groups change. It is likely that many low-status niches among less-educated immigrant groups will have weakened as immigrants gain experience in this country, while some new niches may appear among entrepreneurial and higher-status groups.

The fact that work niches are found among both immigrant and long-resident American groups is a good indication that they are not just a transitory phenomenon. As long as people compete for jobs and ethnic identity plays an important role in determining social networks of advice and support, ethnic work niches will exist.