Chart 14. AVERAGE SALARY OF FEMALE PROFESSIONALS AS A PERCENT OF THAT FOR ALL PROFESSIONALS, BY ADMINISTRATION AND GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION, MARCH 31, 1971

percent, respectively, of the professional workforce.

(Chart 12, p. 40 ).

d. Summary

This study has disclosed pervasive and substantial underutilization of minorities and women in the Department. This underutilization is evident by examining the status of these employees Department-wide. Blacks and females are inequitably distributed Nationwide and under-repre

sented in the Field. The nonblack minorities are under

represented Nationwide, but most acutely in the National Office. Moreover, examining the status of minorities in

each administration reveals that underutilization in DOL

is more severe than that shown by the Department-wide analysis.

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance (OFCC)

uses a method of measuring minority employment status developed by Professor Robert McKersie of the University of Chicago. The method focuses on two basic statistics, the

penetration and occupation ratios, to describe minority

employment in an establishment.

The penetration ratio

reflects the percent representation of a minority in the establishment's workforce, while the occupation ratio reflects the distribution of minority employees across the various occupations in the establishment (the distribution is equitable if minorities are distributed as are all employees, in which case the occupation ratio is 1.000). Using OFCC tables giving McKersie statistics for private industry, comparisons can be made between the Labor De-. partment and the private sector. Such comparisons show that the Labor Department lags significantly behind the

industries with the better EEO records. Of the 50 indus

tries in the Washington, D. C. SMSA in 1967, forty-five had better 1967 occupation ratios for blacks than the DOL National Office had in October 1970; only five were

worse.

13/

A more meaningful comparison, however, is obtained by considering only those industries which had

13/The comparison is between the status of minorities

in private industry in the Washington SMSA in December 1966 (given by 1967 EEO-1 data) and the status of minorities in the DOL National Office in October 1970. The 1967 EEO-1 data was the most recent available when the analysis was done. The nearly four year time lag would seem to work to the Department's advantage, however, as the status of minorities in industry has generally improved since December 1966.

equitable black representation (24%) in 1967. There were

24 such industries, and of those twenty-four, all but one had higher occupation ratios for blacks than the DOL

National Office.

This result merely reflects the concen

tration of blacks in nonprofessional positions in the Department and the inequitable grade distribution of those blacks who are professionals.

Comparing the DOL nationwide

with private industry nationwide, of the 27 industries with 1967 black penetration equal to or greater than the percent blacks comprise of the national population (11.2%), all but six had higher occupation ratios than the DOL nationwide in 1970. However, the nationwide comparison is more mixed than the Washington, D. C. comparison; in general, industry is severely deficient in terms of representation, the DOL in terms of occupation distribution. Even so, the Department still lags behind the industries with the better EEO records. Overall, the DOL fails in its mission to be a model employer. (See Appendix A-3 for a

more detailed presentation of the material in this section.)

1.

B. Explaining underutilization

Examination of employee's demographic characteristics

This section presents a simple quantitative analysis

which examines the following factors that could potentially explain the inequitable distribution of minorities and women: length of service, education, age, geographic location, administration, and time-in-grade. The analysis conducted here investigates the magnitude and characteristics of each of the explanatory factors for the various racial-sexual groups and considers their effect on underutilization. The impact of these factors on underutilization will be investigated by examining each factor individually assuming all others to be constant. The correlation study in the next section considers the effect of each explanatory factor while taking into account the interaction of all the other factors at the same time.

In gaining an understanding of the underutilization of minorities and women, it is important to consider length of government service since this factor represents a significant determinant of an employee's position. Two measures of actual work experience were available for this study: total government service, and service in DOL since last

appointment.

Of these, total government service seemed to

be the more appropriate approximation of what this analysis