Occupational segregation was built by law and custom. After slavery, Black workers in the South were pushed into farm labor and domestic service. Many unions excluded Black members for decades. The New Deal's key labor laws, including the Social Security Act of 1935 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, left out agricultural and domestic workers, locking those jobs out of basic protections.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned job discrimination, but the patterns persisted. Black and Latino workers remain overrepresented in jobs such as home health aides, cooks, cleaners and warehouse workers. White workers remain overrepresented in management and many professional fields. Jobs held mostly by women of color tend to pay the least, even when they require skill and training.
The pattern matters because it explains much of the racial pay gap without any single act of bias. It became visible during the COVID-19 pandemic, when workers of color filled many of the frontline jobs that could not be done from home.