Layoffs by seniority burden minority and recently trained workers disproportionately

Evidence

For some enterprises reductions in personnel rolls can be cleansing but public agencies cannot take advantage of opportunities to eliminate ineffective workers. Particularly affected by decruitment are younger workers and those who have been recently hired, often members of minority groups. It is difficult to specify the impact of decruitment precisely but we can see that it falls unevenly on those with more recent training and new ideas and those with fresh perspectives. It falls less heavily on those with more experience, These observations concerning reductions in work force should not lead us to conclude that street-level bureaucracies should be the size they are, or larger, or that they should never be smaller than they presently are. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1281

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds the reader’s speed-differential test: administrative rules can entrench demographic patterns faster than cultural narratives shift.
• QUESTION: Is there evidence quantifying how much decruitment skewed the racial and generational composition of street-level agencies in the 1970s-80s?