Looking for 1860-1880 and 1940-1950 employment data by sex and race

NHGIS
1

Hi everyone,

I am looking for employment status by sex and race for the following years: 1860, 1870, 1880, 1940 and 1950. I believe this data exists under “Sex By Work Experience In The Past 12 Months By Earnings In The Past 12 Months (In 2012 Inflation-Adjusted Dollars) For The Population 16 Years And Over (White Alone)” and (the same for Black Or African American Alone), but I’m not sure how to extract this data for the years I’m looking for.

I found a similar discussion about finding 2000 census employment data (Seeking 2000 Census unemployment data by U.S. county and race) and tried following the steps outlined there but wasn’t very successful. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

2

I don’t believe this data is available in NHGIS for the years you are looking for, possibly because the variable for Employment Status is not available prior to 1910. You can create a similar table with a data extract from IPUMS USA using the variables LABFORCE, SEX, AGE, RACE, & HISPAN. These data can be analyzed without statistical software packages (using Excel or in our online analysis system SDA) or with statistical software packages (SAS, SPSS, Stata, R); these tutorials and exercises may be helpful.