Abstract
Healthcare occupations are highly segregated by race and gender. Women and workers of color make up a large number of the low-wage healthcare workforce. The overrepresentation of women and workers of color in low-wage healthcare occupations has a long history that it was not surprising to see similar levels of occupational segregation by race and gender among the participants of the HPOG 1.0 programs, federally funded programs to provide training opportunities to low-income adults for in-demand healthcare jobs. White participants were more likely to enroll in training for high-paying occupations such as Registered Nurse, whereas Black participants were more likely to enroll in low-paying occupations such as Certified Nursing Assistant, Home Health, and Personal Care Aide, even with the same level of educational background. Our results using the decomposition method and OLS with grantee fixed effects show that (1) this training level gap explains a significant portion of the racial wage gap, and (2) the labor market rewards for completing higher level training programs, which increased white participants' wages the most, leading to a widening racial gap among the highest training completers. These results suggest a possibility that HPOG participants of color were tracked into low-level healthcare training, causing them to miss out on opportunities to access higher-level training programs and higher wages. It is possible that workforce programs unknowingly mirror longstanding patterns of racial and gender occupational segregation by encouraging participants into specific occupational tracks. More work is needed to study and counter these patterns to ensure that career pathway programs advance equity in addition to individual opportunity. Although training rewards were greater for white participants, guiding Black participants into higher-level training will close the racial wage gap by 4 percentage points.