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Milwaukee Migration Report

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A fundamental force shaping economic opportunity in metro Milwaukee is the region’s status as one of the nation’s most racially segregated metropolitan areas. By 1970, after the first small wave of black migration to Milwaukee, the metro area posted the fifth highest level of segregation among the 30 U.S. metropolises containing large black populations, according to the most authoritative study of racial segregation in American cities. The standard measure of segregation used by sociologists is the “index of dissimilarity,” and a measure of 60 is considered “high” segregation; 80 is considered “extreme” segregation. By 1970, the black-white index of dissimilarity in Milwaukee was 90.5 and it has never dipped below 80 since tenn Researchers…show more content…
Although the segregation of Milwaukee’s Hispanic population is less intense than for blacks – the Hispanic-white segregation rate in 2010 was lower than the black-white rate Hispanic segregation in Milwaukee nevertheless ranks among the worst in the nation. These Hispanic segregation figures are consistent with data on what the census bureau called “linguistic isolation”: households in which no person age 14 or over speaks English at least “very well.” The 2010 census revealed that 31.8 percent of Milwaukee’s Hispanic population lived in such households, up from 24.7 percent in 2010 and 18.9 percent in 1990. In 20 census tracts across Milwaukee’s south side, the rate of such “linguistic isolation” was over 40 percent, a sign of the degree to which linguistic segregation is also part of Milwaukee’s demographic and socio-economic landscape.
At the heart of metropolitan Milwaukee’s hypersegregation is this fact: Milwaukee has the lowest rate of black suburbanization of any large metropolitan area in the…show more content…
For the most part, women hold the majority of these service-sector jobs; thus, the low-wages in these “pink collar” jobs helps explain the overall gender gap in wages in Milwaukee. Indeed, women especially minority women hold a disproportionate percentage, in relation to their overall share of employment in the region, of low-wage jobs such as cashiers, personal and home care aides, child care workers, and waiters and waitresses. For example, although black females make up only 6.6 percent of metro Milwaukee’s workforce, they hold 46.1 percent of the region’s jobs as home health aides, 31.6 percent of the jobs as personal care aides, and 29.1 percent of the positions as childcare workers. Put another way, black females hold seven times more jobs as home health care aides than their overall share of metro Milwaukee employment; five times as many jobs as personal care aides, and four times as many positions as childcare workers. Similar concentrations are discernible for Hispanic females as cashiers, waitresses, and childcare workers, and for white females as registered nurses, childcare workers, waitresses, and cashiers. despite the fact that most of the “occupations of the future” require a high school degree or less, college graduates hold a high percentage of jobs in many of these occupations in
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