In a wide-ranging analysis,the author presents a host of original findings on postwar trends in Hispanic wages, poverty unemployment rates, and educational attainment. The implications of these findings for current debates on income inequality, discrimination, school dropouts, and the domestic effects of immigration are thoroughly evaluated.

The bright side of the 1980s, or the "Hispanic decade," as it was dubbed early on, may ironically turn out to be the detail and sophistication with which the economic and social reversals affecting most Latinos in this period have been tracked, with a fresh cohort of Latino scholars playing an increasingly prominent role in this endeavor. As this volume conveys, these analyses are steadily probing more deeply into the fine grain of the processes bearing on the social conditions of U. S. Latinos and particularly into the diversity of the experiences of the several Latino-origin nationalities until recently generally treated in the aggre gate as "Hispanics. " Though still fragmented and tentative in perspective, as are the disciplines on which they draw and the research apparatus on which they rest, the quest among these new voices for a unifying perspective also comes across in this collection of essays. There is manifestly more under way here than a simple demand for inclusion of neglected instances on the margin of supposedly well understood larger or "mainstream" dynamics. The 1990s open with a more confident assertion of the centrality of the Latino presence and Latino actors in the overarching transformations reshaping U. S. society, and especially in the playing out of these restructurings in the regions and cities of Latino concentra tion.

The Hispanic population has emerged at the largest ethnic/racial minority in the United States, and has also become a major political constituency. Consequently, it is important to gauge the extent to which they have been integrated into various societal institutions. One important institution is the US labor market. The research contained in the present volume assess a number of issues about how well Hispanics are integrated into the US labor market, a major factor in the group’s economic status. The research makes important contributions to the existing body of research on the Hispanic population, and may be used by scholars and policy makers in better understanding the status of this important ethnic/racial group.

The Construction Chart Book presents the most complete data available on all facets of the U.S. construction industry: economic, demographic, employment/income, education/training, and safety and health issues. The book presents this information in a series of 50 topics, each with a description of the subject matter and corresponding charts and graphs. The contents of The Construction Chart Book are relevant to owners, contractors, unions, workers, and other organizations affiliated with the construction industry, such as health providers and workers compensation insurance companies, as well as researchers, economists, trainers, safety and health professionals, and industry observers.