Less-educated U.S. workers often face a lifetime of financial challenges, but some among them are more disadvantaged than others: Young Asian and white men without college education are paid more \u2014 sometimes far more \u2014 than both Black men and women of all racial groups, according to a new study co-authored at UC Berkeley.
\nThe study led by\u00a0Byeongdon Oh, a postdoctoral researcher in the campus\u2019\u00a0Social Sciences D-Lab, found that young Black men with no college education earn barely half of what their Asian American and white counterparts make. Latinx, Asian and Black women lag even further.
\n\u201cEarnings are an important factor to study because they\u2019re related to other outcomes, like health, engagement with the criminal justice system and family development,\u201d Oh said. \u201cSo, we focus on the non-college population at an early age. They are already disadvantaged economically \u2014 they have very low earnings. If there\u2019s a sizable racial or ethnic earnings disparity in this population, there may be severe consequences.\u201d
\nThe study,\u00a0\u201cInequality among the Disadvantaged? Racial\/Ethnic Disparities in Earnings among Young Men and Women without a College Education,\u201d\u00a0was released Dec. 21, 2022, in the journal\u00a0Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, published by the American Sociological Association. It provides the first detailed look at the earnings of young adults with no college experience as their working lives take shape.
\nIn recent years, about one-third of young Americans have stopped their education after high school. That projects to\u00a0roughly 1 million\u00a0less-educated young people every year entering a job market that increasingly requires advanced education and training to earn even a middle-class salary. LatinX and Black people are over-represented in this group.<\/p>\n