
The Whitest Jobs in America - kitcar
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/the-33-whitest-jobs-in-america/281180/
======
Mikeb85
One thing to keep in mind, is different cultures (especially immigrant
cultures) have a different idea of what a 'good' job is. Most non-white people
would say being a veterinarian is a waste of time, for instance.

Having once upon a time done a construction stint, I found it's overwhelmingly
white not because it's racist, but because most immigrants don't want to do
the job (they'd rather have a service job at the entry level, or an
office/business related job at the higher level).

Most immigrants and non-whites are more 'aspirational' you could say, they
want better, more prestigious jobs than trades. I've noticed going through
business school, there's a disproportionate amount of Asians, Indians and
Africans (compared to the overall population). Indeed, in Universities in
general, you'll see more immigrants than are proportional to the population.

I wouldn't be so quick to say it's racism, rather different values. And notice
that the 'whitest' jobs are not what society would call 'prestigious'...

~~~
jacalata
construction? In 2010, ~25% of construction workers were Hispanic [0]. You may
have been in some kind of statistically anomalous area.

[0] -
[http://www.dol.gov/_sec/media/reports/hispaniclaborforce/](http://www.dol.gov/_sec/media/reports/hispaniclaborforce/)

~~~
Mikeb85
Canada, where we don't have many Hispanic immigrants... The vast majority of
non-whites here are Asian or Indian.

~~~
jacalata
That's probably an important detail when commenting on an article about
demographics in America.

~~~
Mikeb85
The point isn't so much demographics in America, but aspirations of white
people vs. non-white people.

~~~
jacalata
Your point was to make a foolishly broad generalization that "all non-white
people are like this"? I'm glad I could prove you wrong in at least one small
instance.

------
rurounijones
On the flip-side, I wonder what the "blackest" jobs in America are? (Aside
from Olympic level sprinters that is)

[EDIT] - Ok, I amend my last bit to "Outside of Professional sports"

~~~
waynecochran
NBA

~~~
popularopinion
Please don't downmod the parent comment for being racist. Before rurounijones'
edit, this answer was probably the most accurate. According to Wikipedia, "In
2011, the NBA was composed of 83 percent non-white players, including 78
percent black, four percent Latino, and one percent Asian; 17 percent of the
players were white." [1] Furthermore, a 1999 analysis of the top 150 NBA point
scorers found that 135 (90%) were Black and 15 (10%) were White. Given that
78% of the US is white and 13% of the US is black, Blacks are substantially
over-represented in the NBA. The author also estimated that in order to
explain this effect, the mean "athletic quotient" of Blacks must be about 0.87
standard deviations higher than the mean "athletic quotient" of Whites.
Furthermore, this athletic superiority is also found in other sports. [2] Very
interesting read, if you're reading this far I suggest you look through it.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_NBA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_NBA)

[2]
[http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/blackathlete.htm](http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/blackathlete.htm)

~~~
joe_the_user
I am downmoding the parent because "NBA" isn't a meaningful job category.

I mean, given the rarity of professional sports success, one could just as
well list "lottery win" as an occupation category.

~~~
omonra
Professional basketball player is an occupation. It's concentration of a
specific group of people shows that it's _exactly_ not a lottery.

You're downvoting it because it doesn't appear to agree with your worldview.

~~~
joe_the_user
The point isn't it's randomness but that it's very, very minute portion of the
population.

99% of would-be professional athletes fail to make a living at it.
Professional athletics isn't a factor affecting where the vast majority of
people go to work after they finish school, except for the way it might take
away from the time they spend preparing for what they wind-up doing.

------
uchi
The title is misleading. These graphs are of unionized workers. I am an
electrician I Chicago. Most non-union work here (construction, carpentry,
plumbing, electrical) is done by Mexicans who vastly outnumber us. 9 in 10 of
all workers. Hah.

------
jacques_chester
Before we jump to theories, has anyone eliminated the null hypothesis?

That is: assuming a totally random distribution of individuals into
professions, purely by chance, some professions will have curious ratios. The
first thing a statistician aims to do is to test the probability that the
observed effect is due to chance.

A second thing to test is whether the ratios are stable across time.

 _This comment represents 20% of your RDA for nitpicky HN comments._

~~~
gamegoblin
I am not a gifted statistician, so I just made a monte carlo simulation to
test. This is not too scientific because in reality different jobs have
different numbers of people, and a thousand other variables, but anyway, here
is the code and results:

    
    
        from random import random, randint
    
        p_white = .81
    
        n_occupations = 100
        n_workforce = 150000000
    
        occupations = [[] for i in xrange(n_occupations)]
    
        for i in xrange(n_workforce):
            occupation = randint(0,n_occupations-1)
            race = "white" if random() < p_white else "other"
            occupations[occupation].append(race)
    
        percentages = map(lambda x:x.count("white")/float(len(x)), occupations)
        print sorted(percentages)
    
        [0.8093594044124566, 0.8093716670190719, 0.8093837105400035, 0.8093941116532061, 0.8094080377696309, 0.809459598174709, 0.8094606757892058, 0.8094949877814243, 0.8095051091912103, 0.8095619154480623, 0.8095855138023271, 0.8096009184415862, 0.8096130265928078, 0.8096471477224493, 0.8096569834673563, 0.8096622916149537, 0.8096635533608949, 0.8096712436008832, 0.8096812597976153, 0.8096856369286581, 0.8096963532163073, 0.8097067434989362, 0.809721568598737, 0.8097215751436514, 0.8097328871910747, 0.8097572581628716, 0.809766392402407, 0.8097706403995997, 0.8097853662894858, 0.8097907743218179, 0.8098200848588418, 0.8098433273181519, 0.8098759161986114, 0.8098761662131717, 0.8098826202953597, 0.8098902227694705, 0.8098932712388633, 0.8099027774814941, 0.8099132209630405, 0.8099239110036907, 0.8099288512271164, 0.809935064025657, 0.8099377895998511, 0.8099442967886306, 0.8099576910748759, 0.8099684818490649, 0.8099723061883299, 0.8099772955347885, 0.8099790775887737, 0.8099951683577414, 0.8099964813792994, 0.8100114768250255, 0.8100264485053597, 0.8100326219727435, 0.8100426685467571, 0.8100538851385188, 0.8100624027564277, 0.8100772456940655, 0.8100799987206602, 0.8100878460787697, 0.8101051239951382, 0.8101238836646114, 0.8101259241335592, 0.8101299639808958, 0.8101333990942324, 0.8101444590699302, 0.810176363997584, 0.8101767343321185, 0.8101835910494692, 0.810185024612142, 0.8101881998783053, 0.8102189975744003, 0.8102348016041733, 0.810247294219311, 0.8102501899417512, 0.8102612850637286, 0.8102728907675896, 0.8102876025226937, 0.8102915035431886, 0.8103243498099062, 0.8103428626649917, 0.8103475670573029, 0.8103618541773706, 0.8103623158464366, 0.8103870909678774, 0.8104014543756358, 0.8104238667513951, 0.8104306535452401, 0.8104537503309478, 0.81046437557304, 0.8104696732444567, 0.8104846773483934, 0.8104918990629446, 0.810527481205214, 0.8105324346430826, 0.8105520454920258, 0.8106940187094273, 0.8107141451872244, 0.8107156884282282, 0.8108683817976586]
    

As we can see by the results, the min and max are around a tenth of a percent
off from the expected value. Even if the job distribution is skewed (certain
occupations have a larger workforce), if N is sufficiently large, numbers such
as +15% should be completely unrealistic.

Please correct me if I have made a grave error that I did not mention (I know
that this is very very hand wavy, unscientific).

~~~
yummyfajitas
I think you are making a grave error - near as I can tell, each of your
simulated occupations has about 1.5 million people in it. Of the few
professions listed that I checked, the biggest (farmer) has only 758k people
in it:

Veterinarian 61k, farmer 758k, mining machine operators 21k, Speech language
pathologist 123k.

The outcome doesn't change much (you go from 81.1% to 81.4% max), I'm just
being a stats geek.

[http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Healthcare/Veterinarians.htm](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Healthcare/Veterinarians.htm)
[http://www.bls.gov/ooh/farming-fishing-and-
forestry/agricult...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/farming-fishing-and-
forestry/agricultural-workers.htm) [http://www.bls.gov/ooh/About/Data-for-
Occupations-Not-Covere...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/About/Data-for-Occupations-
Not-Covered-in-Detail.htm) [http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Healthcare/Speech-language-
pathologis...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Healthcare/Speech-language-
pathologists.htm)

Geography probably plays a big role in some of these. I expect that most
veterinarians and farmers are located in farming and ranching states for
example, and Iowa/Idaho are not exactly known for racial diversity.

~~~
gamegoblin
Yes, I was aware of this, but in 5 minutes of googling I couldn't find a good
answer to the total number of possible professions, so I went with an even
100. As I said, _very_ hand-wavy and not too scientific. But yes, even for a
workforce of 150,000 the results don't get close to breaching into the 90's.

------
tzs
Some of these could be due to training costs. On average in the US, white kids
from wealthier families than black kids, and on average white adults have more
money than black adults. If the trainee has to pay the training costs for a
given job, then it is going to favor whites.

For instance, take "aircraft pilots", which the article says are 90% white. A
small plane can cost in the neighborhood of $100/hour to rent, and one of the
requirements for a commercial license is 250 hours flying as pilot. Add on to
that instructor costs, and you need to have a fair bit of money available to
even get to the point where piloting can be your job. There are some aviation
scholarships, I believe, but they are highly competitive. I believe most
students have to come up with the money themselves at least through getting
their commercial license.

These wealth differences could also indirectly affect some of the jobs on the
list. For instance, black people are more likely to live in poor and high
crime neighborhoods where gangs are prevalent, and there is a lot of pressure
on young people to get involved with the local gang. As a consequence, young
black people are probably more likely than young white people to have an
arrest record. That could make it harder or impossible to get a private
detective license.

------
DanBC
I'm gently surprised they didn't say what the Blackest jobs in America are.
Because that seems like an important part of the comparison.

~~~
joe_the_user
Well, it seems perhaps telling that you don't mention the most-Hispanic, most-
Asian, most-Vietnamese etc. occupations given that these would also
hypothetically be points of comparison. The reflex of viewing American race
relations as black versus white seems rather deeply engrained.

The longer article on race and occupations linked by the main article does go
into detail on multiple dimensions of race and employment. I recall it
mentions domestic attendant and bus driver as black-dominated occupations.

------
hudibras
FYI, the BLS report referenced in the article[1] says that 64% of software
developers are white, 74% of computer programmers are white, and 85% of web
developers are white.

[1][http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsrace2012.pdf](http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsrace2012.pdf)

------
theorique
"Misc. Agricultural Workers" is 92% white? So much for the theory that
agricultural work is done by illegal migrant workers.

~~~
randomdata
Who holds that theory? As a farmer myself, I'm not really surprised at all and
it was my immediate thought upon reading the headline. Most farm work is
highly skilled, which: a) pushes for higher pay, allowing locals to compete.
b) requires skills that will often not be easily obtained by those coming from
poorer countries. The jobs that are easily handed to migrant workers are a
relatively small segment of the industry, and I would expect a dwindling
segment at that.

I'll add that it is striking how non-diverse rural areas tend to be. I can
probably count on one hand the number of non-white people living in my rural
community. That doesn't help with the numbers when hiring from the local
worker pool.

~~~
theorique
I guess it's more of a stereotype. With the higher value / higher skill
farming work, as compared to migrant fruit pickers, I am sure the demographics
are quite different.

------
netcan
There are probably a lot of intertwined reasons for these, different for each
job category. Culture, racism, geography are the big categories. A lot of job
choices are about knowing people who know people who do that job or having
family history in that profession. All these interact. So maybe steel unions
were racist a generation ago and admitted fewer blacks. Then we have fewer
sons and nephews of steel workers and so fewer people likely to go into that
profession.

There are all sorts of professions that are "Jewish professions." The history
of these is both speculative and complicated. You had a cultural tendency
towards literacy when this was uncommon. Racism & transience preventing land
ownership & farming (most Europeans' job) which lead to urban populations and
non land assets. Certain guilds barring Jews girded them into unguilded
professions or guilds without these rules. There were competitive advantages
from transience (contacts in other places) that encouraged certain
professions.

Then you get interacting second and third and forth order effects from having
one set of grandparents that were actors another set who were merchants, the
industries that exist in the place you live (not everyplace has many Jews),
etc.

Some of these professions might be dominated by some subgroup of white, like
descendants of Polish immigrants or late 18th century migrants. There is no
reason to expect that the ratio of whites in a certain profession reflect
their overall ratio in a country. Professions aren't randomly allocated.

IMO, more interesting would be the Blackest, Jewiest professions or some other
minority and trying to figure out how that came to be.

------
courtf
Relevant: [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/08/21/through-
good...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/08/21/through-good-times-
and-bad-black-unemployment-is-consistently-double-that-of-whites/)

------
omonra
I am unhappy with the whole premise of labeling people as white. What do a
Polish immigrant laborer, a Jewish professor and a WASP homemaker have in
common - oh, they're not black. Let's lump them all together!

~~~
sanskritabelt
Hi, welcome to living in America.

------
mcv
I was expecting high end "professional" jobs. Vetinarian fits the bill, I
suppose, but I was expecting surgeons and programmers. Instead, there's a lot
of heavy industry and manual labor in the list.

The note at the bottom says that this could be because some unions are
terribly racist, but carpenter? Painter? You don't have to be in a union to
work with wood or paint, do you?

Or maybe you do. American labor laws are utterly nuts as far as I can tell,
and this is probably yet another sign of just how insane they really are.

------
mathattack
I'm surprised that so many blue collar jobs are less white than Chief
Executives. Interesting example of counter-intuitive data. I suspect that the
sample sizes are too big for large differences to be random. That said, there
could be other issues like "on the books" versus "off the books" and similar.

------
elwell
"Farmers" was surprising.

~~~
igravious
Is "Land Owners" less surprising?

~~~
bilbo0s
True.

It wouldn't surprise me if they were using the term "Farmer" loosely.

EDIT: Now that I look closer, they did say "Farmer/Rancher". So I guess that
could be taken as a hint that this is not the low end manual guy they are
talking about, so much as the landowner.

~~~
randomdata
Farm labourers are generally not considered farmers. I would not really expect
them to deviate from that classification. However, you do not need to own land
to be considered a farmer either (i.e. you could rent land to meet the
criteria).

Though misc. agriculture workers doesn't fall much further behind on the list.

------
jotm
Aren't these numbers a moot point when you consider that 70 percent of the US
is white?

There's literally not enough minorities to change those numbers (not
significantly at least)... Or am I too tired to thing straight?

~~~
wildgift
There's some discussion about this above. If the population is 70% white, then
the job categories should be 70% white. 90% white isn't random.

------
detcader
We should really understand what whiteness actually _is_ if we want to parse
these kind of things correctly:
[http://www.ohio.edu/people/hartleyg/docs/abolishthepoint.pdf](http://www.ohio.edu/people/hartleyg/docs/abolishthepoint.pdf)

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Great point. My father identifies as "white" despite being clearly non-white,
however because of an adoptive ancestry does not have a clear picture, thus he
took the race of his adoptive parents.

I also select "white" on the form because I was brought up thinking that was
correct. Only recently have I been selecting "Other" where available.

~~~
biafra
On what forms do you have to state your "race" or skin color? Ich have never
been asked for it anywhere. I live in Germany.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
So far for me government and medical forms have been the majority of the forms
where it is asked.

Funny enough, when I was in Munich, I was denied entry to a bar because I
would "cause trouble." My German friend informed me it was basically because I
looked Turkish. So in that case, while not on paper, my race was questioned.

------
ck2
I was surprised by this.

Before I read it, my guess would have been the less a job involved creating or
doing anything real (ie. banker, stock trader, financier, etc.) the more
"white" it would be.

ps. what is a "cost estimator" \- do they mean appraiser?

