Employment opportunities are impacted by various factors including racial and ethnic disparities, access to resources, job availability, and the surrounding area where one lives. These factors can affect employment by leading to more open jobs, or to unemployment. 

Unemployment has been linked to various negative effects, such as decreased life satisfaction, poorer health, and fewer political involvement. These results, in turn, widen the gap between groups (beyond economic status) and also aid in furthering inequality in the following generation. 

Social mobility is the movement between classes in society. This leads to people having advantages in the system of social stratification of a society. For employment, social mobility allows individuals to move up or succeed in roles above or below the social strata.

Racial and ethnic disparities impact employment opportunities because there is persistence of inequality in places where people are not treated equally due to where they stand in society based on race, or income. Race-based inequalities that show up in a variety of economic indicators continue to exist in part due to systemic racism. It is true that people of color face higher unemployment rates. The racial wealth divide has also grown over three decades. In the workplace, people of color are scarce at the top and overrepresented at the bottom. Regarding income, white and Asian wages are higher than black and Latinx wages. 

Access to resources impacts employment opportunities due to societal factors including poverty, lack of access to transportation, crowded housing, racial and ethnic disparities, work-related hardship, or risk (such as unemployment, underemployment, and distribution of essential and/or public-facing jobs), and other social conditions. Areas that are socially vulnerable have less access to socioeconomic resources. This can make it hard for people to find jobs and be able to uphold the standards of the title if they do not have simple necessities available to them where they live.

Job availability impacts employment opportunities that are available due to gender, age, and educational factors. Certain jobs are male-dominated, while others are deemed more suitable for women. This causes roles to have gender bias creating conflict and less opportunities for any gender to hold any position.

 Another barrier in job availability is age. This is because young people have faced issues gaining stable jobs since they do not have the same experience levels as older generations. On the other hand, middle-aged and older people also struggle to find new jobs since they already have large financial commitments and are less flexible with the role they want to pursue. 

Education impacts job availability because expanding employment division could result from a widening educational gap. This could potentially accelerate the long-term trend of jobs held by employee with medium and low education levels declining and those held by highly educated workers growing.

The surrounding area where one lives can affect employment opportunities. This is based on socioeconomic status, household data, minority status, language spoken, housing type, and transportation. Redlining also is an issue since it is a discriminatory practice where services are withheld from people who are in low income or minority neighborhoods. The access they have to healthcare, educational opportunities, and other things are much less than in higher income places. 

According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 6.1 million unemployed people in October, up 306,000 from September. The unemployment rate increased by 0.2 percentage points to 3.7 percent. Since March, the jobless rate has fluctuated just little between 3.5 percent and 3.7 percent. 

The unemployment rates for adult women (3.4%) and Whites (3.2%) increased in October among the main worker categories. There was little to no change in the unemployment rates for adult men (3.3%), teens (11.0%), Blacks (5.9%), Asians (2.9%), and Hispanics (4.2%) during the course of the month. 

Both the employment-population ratio (60.0%) and the labor force participation rate (62.2%) were roughly constant in October and haven't changed much overall since the beginning of the year. Prior to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, in February 2020, these metrics were 1.2 percentage points lower. 

At 5.7 million in October, the number of people who are currently out of the labor force and looking for work showed no change from its level of 5.0 million in February 2020. 

In October, there were 114,000 fewer discouraged employees (a subgroup of the marginally attached who thought there were no jobs available for them) than there were in September.

Reference:

The employment situation - October 2022 - Bureau of Labor Statistics. (n.d.). Retrieved November 18, 2022, from https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf 

Employment opportunity is a broad topic that can be related to and different from rates in Dayton, Ohio. This is because the unemployment rate in the U.S. is 3.7, while in Ohio it is 4.2. There are thousands employed and hundreds unemployed. This shows that employment differs in each area depending on the impact inequalities have, or the opportunities available.

This relates to the glass ceiling because there are qualified people who want to advance in the workplace and their employment situation, but there are invisivle barriers that prevent this. This includes that people are not given the same opportunities if they are minorities in the work place. This can affect the employment and unemployment rates in Ohion and the U.S.

References:

Kadowaki, J., fall 2022. SOC 339: Social/Gender Inequality.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (n.d.). Ohio economy at a glance. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved November 18, 2022, from https://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.oh.htm#eag_oh.f.p 

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (n.d.). United States economy at a glance. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved November 18, 2022, from https://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.us.htm 

• Unemployment has decreased significantly in the Dayton region compared to a year ago. 

  • 38,900 people were out of work and the rate was 10%

• There were 23,900 unemployed people in the Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area in June, putting the region's unemployment rate at 6.3%

  • That is higher than the state of Ohio's 5.2% and the U.S. rate of 5.9% 

Reference:

Hulsey, L. (2021, August 3). Dayton region unemployment rate worse than state and U.S. rate. dayton. Retrieved December 1, 2022, from https://www.daytondailynews.com/local/dayton-region-unemployment-rate-worse-than-state-and-us-rate/ID4TGGGJYVCETH3XRGFCQC5BUQ/ 

• The highest paid ethnicity/ race in 2020 of Ohio workers were Asian. they were plaid 1.28 times more than White workers, who made the second highest salary.