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Research Update Minority Access to Jobs and Housing in Metro Milwaukee

Employment and Training Institute research has focused on labor market issues for African Americans, Hispanics and other non-white populations as critical to addressing housing integration and economic concerns in local communities. The Institute has prepared a series of report cards on hiring practices and challenges for Milwaukee area companies and governments, provides customized tables showing diversity (and non-diversity) of employment by place-of-work and residence for every U.S. census tract, and offers critiques of the paradigms imbedded in academic measures of segregation in housing. Report Cards on African American and Minority Participation in Construction Trade Apprenticeships in the Milwaukee Area: A Two-Year Progress Report by 519 construction firms and 18 construction trades. (2008) Updated report card, prepared collaboratively with the NAACP Milwaukee Branch, examines progress in hiring of minority and female apprentices by Milwaukee area construction trade companies. The number of African American apprentices in the construction trades increased 80% (rising from 122 to 219) in the two years since the NAACP issued its report card and recommendations in 2006 calling for increased hiring of minorities in the trades. 85 companies increased their hires of African American apprentices. As of 2007, women still made up only 3.5% of the union apprentices (62 of 1,776) and 2% of the non-union apprentices (5 of 250), with the "largest" numbers employed as electricians (N=14) and operating engineers (N=13). The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development now posts statistics on the race/ethnicity and gender of apprentices in each of the Milwaukee area construction trades. Who Gets Construction Jobs and Where? Employment of African Americans, Hispanics and Total Minorities in the Construction Trades in the Milwaukee MSA, (2006). Worksite analysis and maps using Census 2000 place-of-work data show where white, African American and Latino workers are employed, allowing a first-time examination of census place-of-work data from the perspective of central city neighborhoods and racial/ethnic groups. How to Use ETI Drill Downs to Map Employment Integration and to Assess Workforce Diversity at Government Jobsites [in PDF] (May 2005). This report uses place-of-work data from the 2000 U.S. Census, released in 2004 and 2005 and designed for transportation planners, to assess and compare employment patterns by race/ethnicity at 1,554 federal, state and local government jobsites in the Milwaukee metro area. The report offers a first-time analysis of the presence of minorities at specific government worksites and assesses the extent to which larger government sites meet availability standards typically used by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) for the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws and affirmative action requirements placed on federal contractors. The report offers examples of the following: Maps of jobsites for African Americans and Hispanics, compared to whites (for the federal, state and local governments). Numbers of government jobsites meeting availability standards for employment of minorities. Reports on the diversity record of the largest 25 government worksites in the metro area. Methodology for targeting opportunities for increased employment of minorities and affirmative action efforts by government and worksite. Employer Diversity Drill Downs for All Census Tracts in the U.S. This website allows users to identify the race/Hispanic origin of the workforce employed in each U.S. census tract by industry, occupation, and type of employer. The data offers a first-time examination of the Census Transportation Planning Package (CTPP2000) place-of-work data from the perspective of central city neighborhoods and minority populations seeking greater business and employment opportunities. Tables (which can be requested for individual or groups of census tracts) also show the earnings of workers employed in each neighborhood by race/ethnicity and by age, the poverty status of workers by means of transportation to work. Populations analyzed include African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and whites. Assumptions and Limitations of the Census Bureau Methodology Ranking Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation in Cities and Metro Areas (August 2004). A monograph by Lois Quinn responds to a request from the U.S. Census Bureau to serve on a five-member peer review panel examining a detailed study by the Bureau ranking major metro areas by their level of racial and ethnic housing segregation. The paper raises concerns about definitions of race used for the study, the "white reference" perspectives imbedded in the indexes selected, the choice of census tracts (rather than blocks), and the reliance on metropolitan statistical area boundaries as proxies for housing markets. The Census study reported on segregation of various racial/ethnic groups but not on "white segregation." Quinn criticized the indices used for their racial bias against majority non-white neighborhoods, noting the origins of the indices in the 1960s and based on concerns of white academics with "tipping," the notion that urban whites will move out of a neighborhood once the African American population reaches a critical mass. Consequently, the academics developed rankings which valued "dispersal" of the minority (i.e., non-white) populations to minimize their effect on any single white neighborhood. Geographer Harold Rose, an African American, observed that the terminology used by these scholars to describe racial changes in neighborhoods [i.e., invasion, succession], while derived from descriptions of plant ecology, "has come to represent the white residents' perception of events in the struggle for residential space, and in all likelihood the white writer's perceptions as well." (cited from Harold M. Rose, The Black Ghetto: A Spatial Behavioral Perspective, New York, 1971, p. 8) Quinn called for measures of integration that are multi-racial (not just black-white, Hispanic-white, Asian-white, etc.) and which recognize both minority-majority and majority-minority neighborhoods as integrated. The Census Bureau study on Racial and Ethnic Segregation in the United States: 1980-2000 is available on the Census Bureau website in HTML format or in PDF format. The panelists' perspectives on the Census Bureau methodology are posted on the Census Bureau Housing Patterns website.

Racial Integration in Urban America: A Block Level Analysis of African American and White Housing Patterns, available in HTML format or PDF format (August 2003). This study raises questions about the white-black dissimilarity index historically used to rank metropolitan areas and its assumptions about the lack of integration occurring in many cities with large African American populations. The study includes preliminary development of alternative measures of integration -- which view white and other racial/ethnic populations as equal partners in the integrating process -- as a first step toward articulating measures that might assist cities in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of their population mixes. In the City of Milwaukee, for example, one-fifth (21.6 percent) of all residents live on blocks that are black-white racially mixed -- that is, where African Americans make up at least 20 percent of the population and where whites make up at least 20 percent of the population as well. Outside of the City of Milwaukee, less than 1 percent of residents in the metro area lived on black-white integrated blocks. Maps of the African American and White Populations in the 100 Largest Metro Areas For the 100 largest metro areas in the U.S., the Employment and Training Institute offers 400 maps showing the integrated, predominantly African American, and predominantly white neighborhoods, based on 2000 Census data.

Birmingham MSA
Block groups with at least 20% white and 20% African American populations	Block groups with more than 80% African American populations	Block groups with more than 80% white populations, Census 2000

Related Studies Planning Document for Employers: Changing Demographics of the Milwaukee Metro Labor Force, available in HTML format or PDF format (August 2003). The future of the Milwaukee metro labor force lies in large part with its minority populations. Metro Milwaukee has the youngest African American population among the 100 largest metro areas in the U.S. Its Asian population is 4th youngest and its Latino population is 9th youngest. By contrast, the white population is older than in most metro areas, and many white baby boomers are reaching retirement age. Major challenges will be to replace retiring workers with younger trained workers from Milwaukee and to attract professionals to the metro area from other parts of the U.S. Successfully educating African American and Latino youth is imperative for the health of the metro economy. Confronting Anti-Urban Marketing Stereotypes: A Milwaukee Economic Development Challenge (June 2001) An examination of products promoted by national marketing firms indicated that many firms used racial and class-based stereotypes to describe urban neighborhoods. For example, international firms' websites claimed that African Americans in Milwaukee "splurge on fast food and spend leisure time going to bars and dancing," that Milwaukee Hispanics "splurge on videos, long-distance phone calls, cable TV, and theme parks and casino visits," while upper-income white residents were described as "interested in civic activities, volunteer work, contributions and travel." This ETI report compares the spending per square mile by central city residents in racially mixed and non-white neighborhoods with spending in suburban areas to show the concentrated buying power of central city residents. As background, this 2001 report examined the methodologies firms use to develop marketing information on Milwaukee neighborhoods, traced the history of marketing clustering systems, and explored the damage marketing stereotypes pose for Milwaukee and other cities. A paper for The Brookings Institution on Exposing Urban Legends: The Real Purchasing Poor of Central city Neighborhoods (2001) provides a template for other cities on how to address marketing stereotypes and identify economic assets of urban communities.

Discussion (LQ) John T. Metzger has a useful working paper on Clustered Spaces: Racial Profiling in Real Estate Investment, which offers a detailed history of the evolution of the firms specializing in clustering data and explores the racial aspects of several ranking systems. In 2001, after Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist criticized Claritas and CACI for using misleading information that discouraged business expansion in innercity neighborhoods, the president and CEO of Claritas reported to the press that his marketing company would remove references to gambling or use of tobacco and alcohol in characterizing neighborhoods. The new stereotypes subsequently posted on the Internet, however, described central city Milwaukee African Americans as "inner city strugglers" who "watch a lot of television and listen to a lot of radio." A major concern is that marketing firms will remove blatantly racist descriptions and labels from their cluster reports while continuing to downgrade neighborhoods because they are predominately minority.

Purchasing Power Profiles for City of Milwaukee and Metro Area Suburban ZIP Codes Using a state-of-the-art methodology, the Employment and Training Institute prepared purchasing power comparisons for central city neighborhoods denigrated by anti-urban, anti-racial stereotypes. The reports, prepared for the City of Milwaukee, show the purchasing power strength of dense urban neighborhoods for common retail items. The Institute now makes consumer expenditure data available (without stereotypes) for all ZIP codes and census tracts in the U.S. to assist underserved neighborhoods and minority businesses in identifying spending power of urban markets. Customized printouts may be secured from the ETI Urban Purchasing Power/Workforce Density Page. Neighborhood Indicators of Employment and Economic Well-Being of Families in Central City Milwaukee Neighborhoods Employment and Training Institute neighborhood indicators reports, prepared since 1998, identify issues of special concerns to African American and Latino populations. The number of central city residents with driver's license suspensions for failure to pay fines and civil forfeitures continued to show all-time increases, with 4 times as many central city residents losing their licenses over fines (51,135 in a single year) than for traffic violations, driving while intoxicated, and drug convictions combined. State and municipal policies continue to draw African American males into the court system for this "driving while poor" offense. The neighborhood indicators also showed very low claim rates for the Earned Income Tax Credit (41 percent for income-eligible married tax filers) for families on Milwaukee's near southside, where many Hispanics reside. Policy recommendations are provided for these and other issues.