Can Black workers escape spatial mismatch? Employment shifts, population shifts, and Black unemployment in American cities

摘要

This paper uses a spatial mismatch index that measures the extent to which residential and employment locations differ across a metropolitan area to determine whether the spatial separation of Black residential locations and employment locations impacted Black labor market outcomes from 1980 to 1990. It is found that between 1980 and 1990 unemployment rates for Black workers were negatively affected by a growing divergence between Black residential locations and metropolitan employment locations. Metropolitan employment shifts increased Black unemployment rates by 0.63 to 4.32 percentage points while Black population shifts did not fully offset the impact of employment shifts.