Abstract

This paper examines changes in occupational crowding of immigrant women in frontline industries in the United States during the onset of COVID-19, and we contextualize their experiences against the backdrop of broader race-based and gender-based occupational crowding. Building on the occupational crowding hypothesis, which suggests that marginalized workers are crowded in a small number of occupations to prop up wages of socially-privileged workers, we hypothesize that immigrant, Black, and Hispanic workers were shunted into frontline work to prop up the health of others during the pandemic. Our analysis of American Community Survey microdata indicates that immigrant workers, particularly immigrant women, were increasingly crowded in frontline work during the onset of the pandemic. We also find that US-born Black and Hispanic workers disproportionately faced COVID-19 exposure in their work, but were not increasingly crowded into frontline occupations following the onset of the pandemic. The paper also provides a rationale for considering the occupational crowding hypothesis along the dimensions of both wages and occupational health.

摘要

本文研究了 COVID-19 爆发期间美国一线行业移民女性职业拥挤的变化，我们将她们的经历置于更广泛的基于种族和基于性别的职业拥挤的背景下。基于职业拥挤假说，即边缘化工人拥挤在少数职业中以支撑社会特权工人的工资，我们假设移民、黑人和西班牙裔工人被分流到一线工作以支持健康大流行期间的其他人。我们对美国社区调查微观数据的分析表明，在大流行病爆发期间，移民工人，尤其是移民妇女，在一线工作中越来越拥挤。我们还发现，美国出生的黑人和西班牙裔工人在工作中不成比例地面临 COVID-19 暴露，但在大流行病爆发后并没有越来越多地涌入一线职业。该论文还提供了从工资和职业健康两个维度考虑职业拥挤假说的基本原理。