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Over the last forty years, U.S. workers have faced stagnant or falling wages, growing wage inequality, and an increasing incidence of low- and poverty-wage jobs. In this issue of RSF, edited by economist David R. Howell and sociologist Arne L. Kalleberg, an interdisciplinary group of contributors analyze the state of job quality, especially for low-wage workers and those in nonstandard work arrangements. Howell and Kalleberg’s introduction suggests that explanations for worsening job quality can be organized into three broad views of the labor market: a competitive market model; a contested market model, where wage-setting takes place in firms that operate in imperfect markets and where employers have substantial bargaining power; and social-institutional approaches that underscore the importance of social, political, and structural forces.

As a result of technological changes and outsourcing, unpredictable and uncertain work schedules are now widespread. Contributors Cathy Yang Liu and Luísa Nazareno show that workers in nonstandard employment arrangements earn less and work fewer hours than full-time workers. Susan Lambert, Julia Henly, and Jaeseung Kim demonstrate that in addition to the financial insecurity caused by precarious work schedules, those who experience shortfalls in hours are increasingly distrustful of societal institutions. Other contributors examine job quality for women and people of color. David S. Pedulla and Katariina Mueller-Gastell study the rates at which various groups of workers apply for nonstandard jobs and find that black and Hispanic workers are overrepresented in such positions. Michael Schultz examines mobility out of low-wage work and finds that women and nonwhites are the most entrenched in such jobs. He shows that there is greater mobility out of low-wage work where unions foster the use of job ladders and pay scales.

The issue recommends a slate of policies for creating better jobs, including increasing the federal minimum wage; strengthening collective and individual bargaining, especially through unions; and widening access to health insurance, paid sick and family leave, and childcare. In the absence of family-friendly policies at the federal level, sociologists Rachel Dwyer and Erik Olin Wright propose investments in the “social and solidarity” economy, including NGOs, nonprofit organizations, social enterprises, and worker cooperatives.

Enhancing the quality of jobs is of urgent concern to workers, employers, and society at large. This issue of RSF helps us better understand the reasons for and consequences of declining job quality and suggests policies that would protect the most vulnerable workers.

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Modest real wage growth, rising wage inequality, and decreasing labor force participation among less-educated workers have been important labor market trends for several decades. Economists Erica Groshen and Harry Holzer and a roster of labor market experts present new evidence on the prevalence, causes, and future of these challenges.

Contributors George Borjas and Richard Freeman analyze how industrial robots and the influx of immigrants have affected jobs and earnings in the manufacturing industry. They find that the effects of robots are greater than those of immigrants in terms of depressing earnings and reducing employment, suggesting the need for policies that can help workers adjust to automation. Thomas Kochan and William Kimball note the lower density of unions and their declining impact on wages, even as surveys show strong worker preference for union representation and other forms of “voice” regarding wages, compensation, training, and other working conditions.

Informal work, which includes traditional activities like babysitting as well as newer ones like driving for an online platform, is an important means of helping families make ends meet. Katharine Abraham and Susan Houseman show that over a quarter of the workforce hold jobs aside from their main employment, and a higher share of minority, low-income workers rely on informal work. Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger demonstrate that current survey tools miss many instances of multiple job holding.

David Weil demonstrates how the rise of “the fissured workplace”—where businesses outsource key facets of their operations to staffing agencies and other third-party entities—contributes to wage inequality. Contracted workers have lower earnings and fewer opportunities for upward mobility. The U.S. is the only industrialized country that does not provide paid leave for new parents. Elizabeth Doran, Ann Bartel, and Jane Waldfogel propose a payroll tax to support family-friendly policies, such as paid leave and child care, as well as modest employer mandates for scheduling control and flexibility.

Editors Groshen and Holzer provide evidence-based policy recommendations that include greater support for public higher education, adjusting federal wage and hour laws as well as those governing labor relations, limiting the effects of past incarceration on workers, and stronger youth employment programs and policies. American workers face many challenges, but the many policies analyzed in this issue of RSF offer promise for improving employment and earnings for American workers.

Winner of the 2020 Robert E. Park Award for Best Book from the Community and Urban Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association

Winner of the 2020 Distinguished Contribution to Research Award from the Latino/a Section of the American Sociological Association

Honorable Mention for the 2020 Thomas and Znaniecki Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association

“María Rendón’s longitudinal study of second-generation Mexicans in two poor Los Angeles neighborhoods is a tour de force. Featuring data from repeated intensive interviews with young Latino men and their immigrant parents, Stagnant Dreamers reveals how strong kin-based support and ties to community programs or organizations can mitigate the powerful effects of inner-city violence and social isolation. Rendón’s illuminating analysis is a must-read.”
—WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor Emeritus, Harvard University

“In this powerful book María Rendón explores the transition to adulthood of young men whose parents immigrated from Mexico. Years of careful ethnographic work following them from their late teens until their early thirties demonstrates that they are fully American, and that the young men and their parents believe in the American dream, work hard, and strive for upward mobility. Combining perspectives from immigration and urban studies, Stagnant Dreamers shows how these hopes and dreams are sometimes realized and sometimes dashed, but most often show slow and limited progress. These young adults overcome violent neighborhoods and inadequate schools to build a life for themselves and their children. The reader comes away with a deep understanding of the realities of growing up in a poor immigrant community, understanding better the choices the young men make and the consequences they face. This beautifully written, deeply empathetic book should be required reading for experts and students alike.”
—MARY C. WATERS, John Loeb Professor of Sociology, Harvard University

A quarter of young adults in the U.S. today are the children of immigrants, and Latinos are the largest minority group. In Stagnant Dreamers, sociologist and social policy expert María Rendón follows 42 young men from two high-poverty Los Angeles neighborhoods as they transition into adulthood. Based on in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations with them and their immigrant parents, Stagnant Dreamers describes the challenges they face coming of age in the inner city and accessing higher education and good jobs and demonstrates how family-based social ties and community institutions can serve as buffers against neighborhood violence, chronic poverty, incarceration, and other negative outcomes.

Neighborhoods in East and South Central Los Angeles were sites of acute gang violence that peaked in the 1990s, shattering any romantic notions of American life held by the immigrant parents. Yet, Rendón finds that their children are generally optimistic about their life chances and determined to make good on their parents’ sacrifices. Most are strongly oriented towards work. But despite high rates of employment, most earn modest wages and rely on kinship networks for labor market connections. Those who made social connections outside of their family and neighborhood contexts more often found higher quality jobs. However, a middle-class lifestyle remains elusive for most, even for college graduates.

Rendón debunks fears of downward assimilation among second generation Latinos, noting that most of her subjects were employed and many had gone on to college. She questions the ability of institutions of higher education to fully integrate low-income students of color. She shares the story of one Ivy League college graduate who finds himself working in the same low-wage jobs as his parents and peers who did not attend college. Ironically, students who leave their neighborhoods to pursue higher education are often the most exposed to racism, discrimination, and classism.

Rendón demonstrates the importance of social supports in helping second-generation immigrant youth succeed. To further the integration of second-generation Latinos, she suggests investing in community organizations, combatting criminalization of Latino youth, and fully integrating them into higher education institutions. Stagnant Dreamers presents a realistic yet hopeful account of how the Latino second generation is attempting to realize its vision of the American dream.

MARÍA G. RENDÓN is assistant professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy at the University of California, Irvine.

A Volume in the American Sociological Association’s Rose Series in Sociology

“In this groundbreaking study, the authors explore the extent of interracial friendships and romantic relationships for young people from their early teens through their late twenties. Across the racial and ethnic groups of whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, the authors find complex patterns of racial boundary maintenance and crossing. The complexity of race in twenty-first century America is evident in this clearly written and rigorously researched book. The main finding that race still keeps so many young people apart is tempered with the hopeful finding that kids who attend diverse schools are much more likely to have close friendships and romantic relationships that cross these barriers. The Company We Keep has so much to teach both experts and students about race in America.”
—MARY C. WATERS, John Loeb Professor of Sociology, Harvard University

“This landmark study revises theories of changing ethno-racial boundaries over the life course by examining romantic pairings at two pivotal life course periods and demonstrating unequivocally that intergroup contact and romantic relationships during adolescence carry over to adult relationships. Grace Kao, Kara Joyner, and Kelly Stamper Balistreri clarify the national project of integration by documenting which groups redraw which color lines and under what circumstances. The authors deftly synthesize a vast empirical literature, supplement research gaps with original analyses, and render a complex story about shifting intergroup relations eminently accessible to a broad audience. The Company We Keep will be the touchstone for understanding social integration, race relations, and partnering behavior against the backdrop of increasing population diversification.”
—MARTA TIENDA, Maurice P. During ’22 Professor of Demographic Studies and Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Princeton University

“A pathbreaking longitudinal study of interracial friendships and romantic relationships, The Company We Keep confirms the centrality and continuing significance of race in shaping intergroup relations among youth. By centering intersectionality at the core of the empirical analyses, the authors reveal the intricate interactions of race, gender, and class in forming interracial friendship and romantic ties from adolescence to young adulthood. Moreover, the authors document the relative fluidity and permeability of the American color line as young adults simultaneously transgress and transform the multiplicity of racial boundaries. In tracing the positive impacts of contact with other races in adolescence on the likelihood of interracial ties and romantic partners in adulthood, the book also points to one specific pathway toward the future of a more racially integrated American society. The Company We Keep is a must-read for scholars of race and ethnicity, immigration, and intergroup contact and relations.”
—VAN C. TRAN, Associate Professor of Sociology and Deputy Director, Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center, CUNY

With hate crimes on the rise and social movements like Black Lives Matter bringing increased attention to the issue of police brutality, the American public continues to be divided by issues of race. How do adolescents and young adults form friendships and romantic relationships that bridge the racial divide? In The Company We Keep, sociologists Grace Kao, Kara Joyner, and Kelly Stamper Balistreri examine how race, gender, socioeconomic status, and other factors affect the formation of interracial friendships and romantic relationships among youth. They highlight two factors that increase the likelihood of interracial romantic relationships in young adulthood: attending a diverse school and having an interracial friendship or romance in adolescence.

While research on interracial social ties has often focused on whites and blacks, Hispanics are the largest minority group and Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial group in the United States. The Company We Keep examines friendships and romantic relationships among blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asian Americans to better understand the full spectrum of contemporary race relations. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, the authors explore the social ties of more than 15,000 individuals from their first survey responses as middle and high school students in the mid-1990s through young adulthood nearly fifteen years later. They find that while approval for interracial marriages has increased and is nearly universal among young people, interracial friendships and romantic relationships remain relatively rare, especially for whites and blacks. Black women are particularly disadvantaged in forming interracial romantic relationships, while Asian men are disadvantaged in the formation of any romantic relationships, both as adolescents and as young adults. They also find that people in same-sex romantic relationships are more likely to have partners from a different racial group than are people in different-sex relationships. The authors pay close attention to how the formation of interracial friendships and romantic relationships depends on opportunities for interracial contact. They find that the number of students choosing different race friends and romantic partners is greater in schools that are more racially diverse, indicating that school segregation has a profound impact on young people’s social ties.

Kao, Joyner, and Balistreri analyze the ways school diversity and adolescent interracial contact intersect to lay the groundwork for interracial relationships in young adulthood. The Company We Keep provides compelling insights and hope for the future of living and loving across racial divides.

GRACE KAO is IBM Professor of Sociology at Yale University.

KARA JOYNER is professor of sociology at Bowling Green State University.

KELLY STAMPER BALISTRERI is associate professor of sociology at Bowling Green State University.

“Status is an important book, both as a statement of the author’s accumulated insights about status in general and as an explanation of our current predicaments. Cecilia Ridgeway is a major figure in the hot area of interpersonal and small group enactment of status, power, and hierarchy. Ridgeway was one who came early to this topic, and she has guided many subsequent efforts. The book represents her life’s work, to a great extent. Because she is so central, the book will be required reading for anyone serious about this domain. This lays out the Ridgeway theory and research program, all in one place and from the source herself, in her prime. Status is the work of a pro: readable, authoritative, written at the right level, with the audience in mind. Readers will benefit from the logical argument and the collected citations.”
—SUSAN T. FISKE, Eugene Higgins Professor and professor of psychology and public affairs, Princeton University

“By integrating cultural schemas into an influential theoretical framework, Cecilia Ridgeway’s book marks the culminating point of the status expectation theory tradition which has had a considerable influence in American social psychology. Status represents a significant broadening of the analytical toolkit we will draw on to make sense of this aspect of inequality and captures Ridgeway’s most lasting contributions.”
—MICHÈLE LAMONT, professor of sociology and of African and African American studies and the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies, Harvard University

“Cecilia Ridgeway’s treatment, Status, is essential reading for anyone who seriously wants to understand why resources are allocated on the basis of social status. The insight that status hierarchies necessarily emerge from social coordination is crucial, as are Ridgeway’s novel ideas about how status embeds itself in our culture as a grammar.”
—EZRA ZUCKERMAN SIVAN, deputy dean and Alvin J. Siteman (1948) Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, MIT Sloan School of Management

Status is ubiquitous in modern life, yet our understanding of its role as a driver of inequality is limited. In Status, sociologist and social psychologist Cecilia Ridgeway examines how this ancient and universal form of inequality influences today’s ostensibly meritocratic institutions and why it matters. Ridgeway illuminates the complex ways in which status affects human interactions as we work together towards common goals, such as in classroom discussions, family decisions, or workplace deliberations.

Ridgeway’s research on status has important implications for our understanding of social inequality. Distinct from power or wealth, status is prized because it provides affirmation from others and affords access to valuable resources. Ridgeway demonstrates how the conferral of status inevitably contributes to differing life outcomes for individuals, with impacts on pay, wealth creation, and health and well-being. Status beliefs are widely held views about who is better in society than others in terms of esteem, wealth, or competence. These beliefs confer advantages that can exacerbate social inequality. Ridgeway notes that status advantages based on race, gender, and class—such as the belief that white men are more competent than others—are the most likely to increase inequality by facilitating greater social and economic opportunities.

Ridgeway argues that status beliefs greatly enhance higher status groups’ ability to maintain their advantages in resources and access to positions of power and make lower status groups less likely to challenge the status quo. Many lower status people will accept their lower status when given a baseline level of dignity and respect—being seen, for example, as poor but hardworking. She also shows that people remain willfully blind to status beliefs and their effects because recognizing them can lead to emotional discomfort. Acknowledging the insidious role of status in our lives would require many higher-status individuals to accept that they may not have succeeded based on their own merit; many lower-status individuals would have to acknowledge that they may have been discriminated against.

Ridgeway suggests that inequality need not be an inevitable consequence of our status beliefs. She shows how status beliefs can be subverted—as when we reject the idea that all racial and gender traits are fixed at birth, thus refuting the idea that women and people of color are less competent than their male and white counterparts. This important new book demonstrates the pervasive influence of status on social inequality and suggests ways to ensure that it has a less detrimental impact on our lives.

CECILIA L. RIDGEWAY is Lucie Stern Professor of Social Sciences, Emerita, in the Sociology Department at Stanford University.