Introduction to Sociology

TRY IT

18. 
    Legal immigration brings not just unskilled workers to the United States, but highly skilled and highly educated workers, as well. What phenomenon does this separation between highly skilled and unskilled workers reflect, for native-born and immigrant workers alike?
    
    1. 
       Polarization
       
    2. 
       Outsourcing
       
    3. 
       Discrimination
       
    4. 
       Automation
       

Check your answers at the end of this document

THINK IT OVER

• 
  As polarization occurs in the U.S. job market, this will affect other social institutions. For example, if midlevel education won’t lead to employment, we could see polarization in educational levels as well. Use the sociological imagination to consider what social institutions may be impacted, and how.
  
• 
  What, in your view, are the major barriers to obtaining work in the United States and how can these barriers best be overcome?
  

GLOSSARY

automation: workers being replaced by technology
outsourcing: a practice where jobs are contracted to an outside source, often in another country
polarization: practice where the differences between low-end and high-end jobs become greater and the number of people in the middle levels decreases

1. 
   Kochhar, Rakesh (September 2018). The American middle class is stable in size, but losing ground financially to upper-income families. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/06/the-american-middle-class-is-stable-in-size-but-losing-ground-financially-to-upper-income-families/. ↵
   
2. 
   Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Participation and Costs (2019). Retrieved from https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/pd/SNAPsummary.pdf. ↵
   
3. 
   Bureau of Labor Statistics (2016). Employment, wages, and projected change in employment by typical entry-level education. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/education-summary.htm. ↵
   
4. 
   Ariane Hegewisch (September 2018). The Gender Wage Gap: 2017; Earnings Differences by Gender, Race, and Ethnicity. Institute for Women's Policy Research. Retrieved from https://iwpr.org/publications/gender-wage-gap-2017/. ↵
   
5. 
   Lincoln Quillian, Devah Pager, Ole Hexel, Arnfinn H. Midtbøen (2017). The persistence of racial discrimination in hiring. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Oct 2017, 114 (41) 10870-10875; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1706255114. ↵
   
6. 
   Janelle Jones (October 2018). Black unemployment is at least twice as high as white unemployment at the national level and in 12 states and D.C. Economic Policy Institute. Retrieved from https://www.epi.org/publication/2018q3_unemployment_state_race_ethnicity/. ↵
   
7. 
   Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, The Economics Daily, Foreign-born workers made 83.1 percent of the earnings of their native-born counterparts in 2016 on the Internet at https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/foreign-born-workers-made-83-point-1-percent-of-the-earnings-of-their-native-born-counterparts-in-2016.htm (visited May 20, 2019). ↵
   
8.