THE IMPACT OF CHANGES IN LOCAL LABOR MARKET CONDITIONS ON ESTIMATES OF OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION Susanne Schmitz and Paul E. Gabriel* Recent work by labor economists has suggested that differential labor market treatment of minorities (e.g., occupational segregation) may vary across local labor markets. This study assesses whether changing economic conditions in a local labor market affects the degree of occupational segregation by race and gender in the United States. Our empirical analysis finds evidence that the relative occupational structures of white women and black males are systematically related to changes in certain local labor market conditions. INTRODUCTION Occupational segregation refers to a situation where two groups of workers tend to work in a different set of occupations on the basis of nonproductivity factors such as race or sex. The numerous studies ana- lyzing the existence and extent of occupational segregation against women and minorities implicitly assume all workers are participating in an ag- gregate labor market-since they group workers into a national data set. The empirical analyses of Hanushek, Hirsch and others cast doubt on the assumption of homogeneous aggregate labor markets? Hence, past stud- ies may have omitted an important consideration: the relationship be- tween local labor market heterogeneity and the economic status of mi- norities and women. This study investigates the possible impact that local labor market *We are grateful to the two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.