Two recent studies featured by the Economic Policy Institute help explain lower earnings of African American men than their white counterparts. The studies “Whiter Jobs, Higher Wages” and “The Low Wages of Black Immigrants,” are available online here.  The paper “Whiter Jobs, Higher Wages” finds that many black workers earn considerably less than their white counterparts. In 2008, black men earned only 71 percent of what white men earned. The median hourly wage for black male full-time workers was $14.90; for comparable white workers it was $20.84. “At the end of the day, it turns out that being black matters,” said Algeron Austin, an economist and Director of EPI’s Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy program. Derrick Hamilton, co-author of the “Whiter Jobs,” study, explains that 90 percent of U.S. occupations are segregated and that neither education nor skills are plausible explanations for the under-representations of black men in upper management. “The Low Wages of Black Immigrants” finds that recent black immigrant workers do no better than native-born blacks in the U.S. economy.