News

Report: Minority retail employees make less than white colleagues

Black and Latino full-time employees working in retail make about 25 percent less than their white counterparts.

June 3, 2015

Black and Latino full-time employees working in retail make about 25 percent less than their white counterparts, according to a reportreleased Tuesday by the public policy group Demos and the NAACP. It also found that black and Hispanic cashiers make about 90 percent of what their white colleagues earn.

"As one of the largest sources of new employment in the U.S. economy, and the second-largest industry for black employment in the country, the problems of occupational segregation, low pay, unstable schedules and involuntary part-time work among black and Latino retail staff point to an important chance for employers to make a real impact on racial inequality by paying living wages and offering stable, adequate hours for all retail workers," authors Catherine Ruetschlin and Dedrick Asante-Muhammad wrote in their report.

The paper claimed that retail employers sorted black and Latino retail workers into lower-paid positions and away from supervisory roles. For example:

• Black workers make up 11 percent of the retail labor force but just 6 percent of managers.
• And black and Latino retail sales workers are overrepresented in cashier positions, the lowest-paid position in retail.

Ruetschlin and Dedrick Asante-Muhammad believe that retailers have a chance to fix this issue. They recommended a variety of ways to accomplish this. Below are just a few of their ideas.

• Increase the federal minimum wage. Raising pay will not only iimprove the living standards for black and Latino workers employed in low-wage jobs, it will also reduce the racial wage gap by compressing lower earners toward the higher median wage earned by whites, the report stated.
• End credit checks. Employers often evaluate credit histories as part of their hiring decisions, but that's likely to have discriminatory effects on people of color without providing insights into whether or not a worker is suited for the job, according to the report.
  "Black workers are more likely to have blemishes on their credit history than white workers because the constraints of high unemployment, low wages, discrimination in credit markets, and a historic and growing racial wealth gap translate to greater economic hardship among people of color."
• Offer full employment for all. Black and Latino workers face high unemployment rates even during the best economic times, according to the report, which also stated that when official unemployment rates dropped to a 30-year low in 2000, black workers still experienced 7.6 percent unemployment — more than double the 3.5 percent unemployment rate of white workers.
  "In order to achieve full employment for all, broader federal employment policy through the Federal Reserve must be complemented with targeted jobs programs for the communities most affected by joblessness throughout the business cycle. Such a program would address the needs of black and Latino workers as well as young adults, who have proven unlikely to reach full employment rates comparable to whites even over long periods of economic expansion."

.