The Great Service Divide: Occupational Segregation, Inequality, and the Promise of a Living Wage in the Seattle Restaurant Industry

With 40 percent of the Washington restaurant workforce composed of workers of color, restaurant professions could provide real pathways to living-wage professions for Black, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous workers.3 However, the current structure of the industry denies living-wage opportunities to a large percentage of this diverse workforce. In order to determine the role of passive or implicit, and active discrimination in hiring practices in Seattle's restaurant industry, the Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) United has partnered with the Seattle Office for Civil Rights to examine restaurant hiring practices and the experiences of workers of color. Utilizing census data to analyze segregation patterns within the industry, matched pair audit tests of job seekers, and interviews and focus groups with restaurant workers, we examined patterns of discrimination in the industry in order to craft proposals to support and encourage the adoption of racial equity practices by employers and the industry at large