Manicurists, Casino Workers, and Medical Scientists: A Glimpse into heavily Asian American Jobs

More than half of all American “personal appearance workers” (including manicurists and pedicurist) are Asian American, while more than a fourth of all casino workers are Asian American.  A little more than a fifth of all computer and mathematical area workers are Asian American.   While some of these facts are surprising and others are not, all are revealed in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report on jobs and ethnicity for 2016, also summarized nicely in this article from Bloomberg.    Above, I show some of what I consider highlights of the data, shown against the percentage of Asian Americans in the work force (6.1%) as a way provide some context.

As I mentioned, some of the stats are not surprising.  There are a lot of Asian Americans in the manicure/pedicure salon business, as we have talked about in the past.  No one should be surprised by the large amount of Asian Americans in STEM professions.  Some of the other stats are more unusual.  Indian Americans have concentrated, for various reasons, in managing hotels and motels and driving taxicabs.  Many Asians and Asian Americans like to gamble, so casinos and many of the local card rooms in our area hire Asians Americans to provide services.  A significant number of Asians have moved to the Las Vegas area to work in the casinos and find cheaper housing – enough to support two 99 Ranch markets.

The Bloomberg article has interesting numbers on other ethnic groups.  Almost 40% of all barbers are African American.  Almost two thirds of dry wall installers are Hispanic.  One thing not highlighted in the Bloomberg article is the opposite – what jobs ethnic groups don’t do.  I looked at the BLS data, and there are practically zero Asian American loggers!  Not surprising.

One take away from this data is that along with great cultural differences, Asian Americans have also have large differences in the jobs and the income that Asian Americans families take in.  Being a nail salon worker averages $26,220 a year compared to a medical scientist averaging $80,530.  Note that there are more than twice as many nail salon type workers than medical scientists.  It would be interesting to see how different categories of Asian Americans fare in the different categories, but that data doesn’t seem to be available.