The effect of race in the U.S. labor market has long been controversial. One posits that racial effects have been diminished since the civil rights movement of the 1960s (Alba & Nee, 2003; Sakamoto, Wu, & Tzeng, 2000; Wilson, 1980). Even if some disparities in labor-market outcomes among race groups are found, advocates of this "declining significance of race" thesis do not attribute these disparities to racial discrimination. They, instead, understand the racial gaps as a result of class composition of racial minority groups, classes represented by larger proportions of the working-class population (Wilson, 1980, 1997) as well as unskilled-immigrant workers (Borjas, 1994). This position tends to ignore populations such as Asian Americans. Asian Americans are characterized neither as the working-class-dominant group nor as the unskilled group. They have higher instances of obtaining professional occupations (Barringer, Takeuchi, & Xenos, 1990). The earnings of some Asian ethnic groups exceed the earnings of non-Hispanic Whites (1) (Shinagawa & Kim, 2008; Shinagawa & Lee, forthcoming). Because of these labor-market outcomes, Asian Americans are often cited as a supporting case for labor-market assimilation theories (Alba & Nee, 2003; Sakamoto, Wu, & Tzeng, 2000), or as an exceptional case to the persistence of racial disadvantages (Massey, 2007, p.113). (2) These perspectives are often supported by aggregate information across occupational fields on Asian Americans, which include their high median incomes and their high percentage of holding professional occupations. However, studies focusing on such aggregate information often overlook racial disparities observed in segmentation of field within professional occupations as well as reward differentials by the field of occupations between Asians and Whites. Within professional occupations, indeed, the levels of earnings returns vary according to the field of professional occupations; some professional occupations are characterized as high-paying fields while other professional occupations are not. According to Sakamoto and Xie (2006), Asian Americans have been segregated from non-Asian Americans occupationally and have not converged from 1960 to 2000. Particularly, highly educated Asian Americans are found disproportionately in high-paying computer, engineering, and medical occupations. Given that, we can infer that the high median and mean wages of Asian Americans are largely the reflection of the high earnings of professional workers in such lucrative science and technology fields. If there is occupational segregation between Asian Americans and Whites within professional occupations, how should we interpret that in the light of racial effects? Can we still say that Asian Americans are assimilating into the U.S. labor
