Structural transformations of the United States labor force: An earningsdecomposition by industry, occupation, gender, and race, 1970--1990

The American labor force changed dramatically during the 1970s and '80s. Deindustrialization, downsizing, and the expansion of more diversified services altered the demand for different occupations. The influx of women into the full-time, year-round (FTYR) labor force expanded the supply of workers. Relative changes in earnings have been a key measure of the social effects of these trends.;Controversy arose as to (1) whether deindustrialization and economic restructuring diminished earnings and increased inequality, and (2) whether the increased presence of women in the full-time, year-round labor force narrowed the gender-earnings gap. The intersection of deindustrialization and feminization created confounding relationships that undermine accurate appraisals. Assessing the net effects upon earnings of those trends requires standardizing the separate rates of change that interact because shifts in the relative proportions between several supply and demand relationships affect earnings.;This study used multivariate standardization and decomposition techniques to discern the net effects upon mean earnings associated with changes in the industry, occupation, gender, and race composition of the labor force during the 1970s and '80s. Multidimensional structural models of the labor force were created by recoding and cross-tabulating the large Public Use Microsample (PUMS) data files from the 1970 and 1990 U.S. Censuses. The baseline industry-occupation matrix was further cross-tabulated by gender and race---two of the primary axes of stratification---to reflect the major differences in earnings associated with the gender-race composition of the labor force.;The mean earnings of the FTYR labor force expanded 3% (...