The two matrices in this appendix specify the typology we developed for analyzing the changing job structure in the United States in the past thirty years. Jobs are divided into three types: low-paying (Job I), middlepaying (Job II), and high-paying (Job III). This three-way division enables us to chart changes in the number of new jobs created as well as changes in the “quality” of jobs (as measured by the wages they command) by ethnic group and gender.

The division into job types I, II, and III is based on an analysis of average incomes in various industry/occupation categories. There is wide variation within categories, but in general what is defined here as a lowpaying, middle-paying, or high-paying industry/occupation is characterized by low, medium, or high mean relative incomes, respectively.

Occupations are defined as regular census occupations. Industries are defined as regular census industrial classifications except for the division of manufacturing into three categories – high-tech manufacturing, which includes three-digit industrial classifications (180, 181, 321, 322, 371, 372, and 341), defense manufacturing (three-digit classifications 292, 352, 362), and traditional manufacturing, which includes all other three-digit classifications 100–392 and the division of services into two categories – high services (three-digit categories 700–12, 721, 730, 732, 740, 742, 812–61, and 872–92) and low services (722, 731, 741, 750–802, and 862–71).