The size of the female low-wage workforce differs depending on the method used to identify American Indian and Alaska Native workers

The bars show, out of the American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) workforce, the share of women paid low wages and the share of women employed in the AIAN workforce. For example, 52% of low-wage Non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaska Native (alone) workers are women and they make up 53.5% of the Non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaska Native (alone) workforce.

Bar chart comparing the gender breakdown of all workers versus low-wage workers, for each specification of American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN): non-Hispanic AIAN alone, Hispanic AIAN, and AIAN in combination with any other race/ethnicity. For AIAN workers in combination with any other race/ethnicity (including Hispanic), it seems like women make up a greater share of the low-wage workforce than the general workforce. But, the converse is true for non-Hispanic AIANs—women make up a larger share of the general workforce than the low-wage workforce. This suggests that different ways of defining racial/ethnic categories may have different results, in perhaps meaningful ways.
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 provide three methods for identifying American Indian and Alaska Native Groups: AIAN in combination with any other race (including Hispanic), Hispanic AIAN alone (with no other racial/ethnic groups), and Non-Hispanic AIAN alone (with no other race/ethnicity).
Chart: UC Berkeley Labor CenterSource: American Community Survey 2022 • Get the dataDownload imageDownload PDFDownload SVGCreated with Datawrapper