Segregation in the Low-Wage Workforce

Over the past 50 years, the composition of the low-wage workforce has changed: more than half of low-wage workers are now people of color, up from just 20 percent in 1971. Today, Black, Latino, and women workers are more likely to be segregated into worse-quality and lower-paying jobs.

Improving working conditions and ending racial segregation into low-wage work in the United States could not only benefit these workers and their families, but also boost the country’s economic growth. Policymakers, employers, and advocates need to identify the occupations where support is needed to improve job quality for the lowest-earning American workers.

These charts illustrate the shifting racial composition of low-wage work and how disparities are becoming more entrenched over time. We compare low-wage work across five occupation groups, which cluster similar jobs together, rather than analyzing more than 500 niche roles individually. The health care support occupation group, for example, includes occupational therapy assistants, massage therapists, nursing aides, dental assistants, and other support roles. Through this analysis, we can more clearly see where low-wage work is concentrated on a workforce level and how it has changed over the last five decades.

Workers of color make up the majority of heavily low-wage occupations

Nationwide, about 23.5 million workers make less than $16.02 an hour. These low-wage workers comprise about one in five people in the US workforce. Despite working some of the most essential roles, low-wage workers receive fewer benefits and have less job security compared with others in higher-paying roles.

In our analysis of occupation groups, we find that food preparation and serving-related occupations—including servers, dishwashers, and fast-food attendants—contain the highest share of low-wage workers (62.5 percent). Other service industry jobs round out the top five low-wage occupation groups, with about half of the workers in the personal care and service and the building and grounds maintenance groups earning low wages.

When analyzed by race, it becomes clear that workers of color comprise the majority of the labor force in these occupations. Many of these jobs have lower wages, worse schedules, and fewer benefits, with Black and Latinx workers especially segregated into these roles, while white men are crowded out.

This occupational segregation—the over- or underrepresentation of specific groups in certain occupations, often despite similar credentials—ensures that many low-wage workers struggle to land better-quality jobs despite their best efforts.

These trends date back decades. In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act enacted a federal minimum wage and other workplace protections—the culmination of nearly a decade of campaigning by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. However, the legislation made some significant exceptions. Industries that previously relied on Black men and women for slave labor, such as agricultural and domestic service work, were left out of these protections, ensuring that predominantly Black occupations remained low quality. Although many of these exceptions have since been removed or narrowed by an expansion of included industries in 1966, inequities in job quality and wages remain.

This segregation of Black workers into low-wage occupations has remained largely consistent since, but the share of low-wage Latinx workers has grown dramatically in recent decades. Since 1971, the share of Latinx workers in the five occupation groups with the most low-wage workers has increased nearly five-fold.

As a result, these five occupation groups—and the entire low-wage workforce—now employ more workers of color than white workers. Latinx workers make up 27 percent of the low-wage workforce and 32 percent of these heavily concentrated low-wage occupation groups, but only consist of 20 percent of the US labor force. White workers, meanwhile, are 57 percent of the US labor force, but just 46 percent of the low-wage workforce.

Labor force trends could further entrench occupational segregation

Over the past 50 years, the share of workers of color has increased dramatically among the service- and care-oriented occupation groups. Among food preparation and serving-related occupations, the share of workers of color nearly doubled since 1971, rising from 24 percent to 53 percent. Care and service occupations saw the largest jump, consisting of just 17 percent workers of color in 1971 and 59 percent workers of color today. Similarly, health care support occupations moved from 39 percent to 57 percent workers of color.

The burden of these increases has not been felt equally either, with women—especially women of color—much more likely to hold service and care-based roles. According to an analysis conducted by the American Association of University Women, women comprise more than half of food preparation (56 percent) and serving workers and the vast majority of child care workers and personal care aides (93 and 83 percent, respectively). Black women alone hold nearly a third of nursing assistant and a fifth of personal health aide jobs, meanwhile Latina women make up a fifth of child care workers.

The increased segregation of workers of color into service- and care-oriented roles comes at a time of rapid growth among these occupations. In 1971, personal care and service occupations were 1.8 percent of all US jobs and health care support occupations were 1.1 percent. Today, these occupation groups have grown by 49 and 88 percent, respectively, and combined make up nearly 5 percent of the entire US workforce.

In many ways, Americans depend on the service and care sectors to make their lives work. Working parents need child care; an aging population needs health care; and everyone has daily needs they turn to the service industry to fill.

Despite the societal necessity of these roles, many workers in these occupation groups receive paltry wages. Child care workers, for instance, earned a typical (median) hourly wage of just $12.71 in 2023, and critical jobs like nursing, psychiatric, and home health aide workers earned a typical wage of $17.40, just above the low-wage threshold. This mismatch of pay and necessity arises in part because those who most need care—parents of young children, older adults, and people with disabilities—are often the least able to pay for it and in part because these roles have historically been filled by women providing uncompensated, invisible labor.

Many of these jobs, especially in food and service industries, also feature irregular work hours and unpredictable pay. The hourly and shift work often found in these occupations has been shown to increase hardship for workers in terms of access to food, housing, and medical attention.

As these occupations continue to grow, the ongoing segregation of workers of color into these roles risks further entrenching long-standing economic disparities. Without clear paths to financial stability and career advancement into higher quality jobs, workers in these industries, especially workers of color, will face more precarious situations, hindering not only their livelihoods but also the US economy.

Addressing occupational segregation in low-wage work

Although improving the conditions of low-wage work will directly benefit these workers, addressing job segregation can also benefit American families, employers, and the economy. By increasing wages in these essential occupations, employers can lower turnover rates and generate higher economic productivity and greater economic mobility for workers in the jobs that undergird America’s economy. Implementing greater scheduling stability for workers may also provide an opportunity to improve working conditions and employee productivity.

Ultimately, by addressing occupational segregation in low-wage work, policymakers and employers can build America’s workforce, boost productivity, and create a more equitable, sustainable economy.