Race and Gender Wage Discrimination and the Business Cycle: a time-series analysis of an estimated Oaxaca-Binder Discrimination Index

A wage-discrimination index is constructed with the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method from CPS data across 1980-2018 to examine through time-series analysis whether there is a trend and how cyclical downturns and labor market swings affect the discrimination experienced by three "disadvantaged" groups of workers relative to one privileged group: White Women, Afro-American Women and Afro-American Men versus White Men. A positive deterministic trend in experienced wage discrimination was found for Afro-American Men and a downward trend for White Women. The discrimination experienced by Afro-American Men and Afro-American Women drops respectively by 4.9% and 1.4-4% when there is a downward swing in the economy, while the position of White Women worsens by 1.4-1.8%. Break points in the relationship were found at the beginning of the 2008 Recession and at the end of the following stagnation for two groups. However, the results in the relationship between cycle and discrimination are weakly robust.