Share of low-wage workforce across industries for each racial/ethnic group

Table shows the distribution of workers paid less than $19.69 across different industries, by race/ethnicity. For example, 18.7% of all Black workers paid low wages are employed in the Health Care and Social Assistance industry. The last column is color-coded, with darker colors indicating that the industry employs a larger share of the total low-wage workforce.

In 2022, the value of the low-wage threshold is $19.69. The sample includes workers who live and work in California, were employed last week but not self-employed, ages 16+, and with non-zero earnings last week. We combine 2021 and 2022 data to increase sample sizes and inflate 2021 wages to 2022 dollars before applying the 2022 low-wage threshold. Some cells, particularly NH AIAN alone and NH Black, may still have small sample sizes. All racial/ethnic categories are mutually exclusive.
Chart: UC Berkeley Labor CenterSource: American Community Survey 2021 and 2022Get the dataEmbed Download imageDownload PDFDownload SVGCreated with Datawrapper