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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 13. Seeking Jobs Outside Agriculture - 7. The Employment Hazards of Unskilled Work - 8. The Size of the Negro Labor Force and Negro Employment
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Chapter 13. Seeking Jobs Outside Agriculture 297
^
of their position as common laborers. Negroes nmst become skilled workers,
since the demand for unskilled workers is declining.
The proportion of unskilled workers in the nonagricultiu-al labor force
is much greater in the South than in the North (Table 4). One of the
reasons is that the iron, steel, and machinery industries, with their great
need of skilled labor, are less well represented below the Mason-Dixon line
than they are in certain other parts of the country. Then, too, there has been
comparatively little incentive to mechanization in the low wage regions of
the South. But this means, on the other hand, that there are in the South
many more laborers who can be displaced by mechanization. The Wages
and Hours Law tends to spur mechanization by raising wages. It goes
without saying that the Negroes are^ and will continue to bey the main
sufferers in such a develofment. Over 70 per cent of the Negro males in
nonagricultural pursuits in the South were in unskilled occupations j
the
corresponding figure for Southern whites was 20 per cent. The Southern
Negroes were, in this respect, somewhat worse off than the Northern
Negroes. Southern industry was more ‘‘saturated” with unskilled Negro
Jabor than Northern industry. Almost half of all unskilled male workers
outside agriculture in the South were Negroes.^® The occupational status
of the Southern whites, on the other hand, was somewhat higher, in certain
respects, than was that of the Northern whites. The reason is obvious:
white workers in the South had a near monopoly on the higher jobs but were
less well represented in the lower occupations.®
If the Negro’s occupational status was particularly low in the South,
it does not mean that it was high in the North. Actually there was little
difference: about two-thirds of the male Negro workers in the North were
in unskilled occupations. But since these Negro workers constituted only
about one-tenth of all laborers in the North, there should be more room
for the Negro in the North, even if he remains confined to the bottom of
the occupational ladder.
8. The Size of the Negro Labor Force and Negro Employment
Considering all the limitation that Negroes face in every occupation,
even those where they are not completely excluded, it is pertinent to ask:
What proportion of Negroes have any jobs at all? Is the Negro merely
exchanging his position as a dependent and exploited sharecropper for that
of an urban unemployed person and a relief client?
In nonfarm areas of the United States in 1940, 47 per cent of all non-
• This observation about the occupational status of Southern and Northern whites agrees
fairly well with the finding about urban incomes in the South and the North. See Chapter
16. Median incomes for white familiesi contrary to common belief, are not lower in the
urban South than in the urban North, the reason being that the Southern white population
—due to the presence of the Negro—has an “incomplete lower class.”
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