BARRIERS TO A BETTER BREAK - EMPLOYER DISCRIMINATION AND SPATIAL MISMATCH IN METROPOLITAN DETROIT

This article discusses key findings from a survey-based employer study designed to evaluate the relative merit of race, space, and skill-bas ed explanations for growing wage and employment gaps between blacks an d whites. The author found that black employers hired a greater percen tage of black workers for their firms than white employers matched on the basis of firm size, location, and product produced, but black-owne d firms paid lower wages, even though there seemed to be no major diff erences in skills required for the jobs studied. However, suburban bla ck-owned firms, as well as white-owned firms with strongly enforced an ti-discrimination programs, hired much higher percentages of black wor kers than white-owned firms that did not have such programs. The autho r presents the findings of disparate wages paid to workers in black- a nd white-owned firms in the context of the spatial mismatch literature .