The Job Quality Gap: Gender and Racial Disparities in Access to High-Quality Occupations

Background:

The “future of work” is a growing concern across multiple sectors of US society, including the private sector, policymakers, and advocates. Social Work researchers can play a key role in shaping the future of work given our ethical concerns of equity, and dignity and worth of every person. Leading with these ethics, social work science can bring attention to the quality of work, ask who has access to high-quality jobs, and advance ethically sound policy solutions for the future of work. While a line of scholarship illustrates significant gender and racial pay gaps, limited scholarship has examined if such gaps extend to other markers of job quality. Using survey data from over 5,500 workers across Illinois, the current study uses a multi-dimensional measure of job quality to identify the highest and lowest-quality occupations. We ask the following questions:

1. What occupations fall within the categories of high-quality, medium-high-quality, medium-quality, medium-low-quality, and low-quality jobs?

2. What are the gender differences in employment in higher-quality jobs? Does educational attainment explain these gender differences?
3. What are the differences in employment in higher-quality jobs at the intersection of race and gender?

Methods:

Data are from a Qualtrics-administered survey of 5,610 workers in Illinois in late 2023 to early 2024. We constructed a job quality composite score (with a 100-point maximum) using three key components of ten employment quality dimensions (i.e., pay, benefits, work-life reconciliation, job security, advancement, hours and scheduling, co-worker/supervisor support, working conditions, job content, voice/representation). Data were aggregated at the occupational level, and for each component, occupations were categorized into quintiles. We summed all components to yield a composite score for all occupations, which we then classified into five job quality groups. Descriptive and OLS analyses are used to answer our research questions.

Results:

The highest quality jobs received the highest scores on five or more dimensions, with management receiving eight out of the ten dimensions and the highest total score of 87.6. Men are disproportionately employed in the highest-quality jobs, occupying 62% of these jobs. Nearly 42% of all men are employed in the highest quality jobs, compared to just 28% of women. Additional analyses show that, compared to women, men are much more likely to occupy a higher-quality job as their education increases. Analysis at the intersection of gender and race shows that White men are more likely to be employed in the highest-quality jobs compared to others. Black women are the least likely to occupy the highest-quality jobs.

Conclusions and Implications:

Our study suggests a job quality gap – with women and Black and Hispanic workers less likely to be employed in higher quality occupations that offer key features of better benefits, work schedules, job security, and advancement opportunities – all critical factors for worker well-being and social mobility. We discuss actions policymakers and employers can take to expand opportunities in accessing current good quality jobs and increasing the number of jobs with good qualities.