Asian americans in the public service: Success, diversity, and discrimination

The article presents information on the variations in the educational and earning levels of Asian Americans. The author says the despite high average salaries, Asian federal employees earn less and wield less supervisory authority than comparably qualified nonminorities. For women, the pattern is more complex and more troubling. The author says that although Asians have been classified as a single minority group in official U.S. statistics since 1976, they vary widely in culture, language and recency of immigration. The author believes that Asian Americans are falsely perceived to be largely exempt from economic problems such as high unemployment or poverty. Their average family income exceeded the U.S. average by about 28 percent in 1985 primarily because Asian Americans households are generally larger. Asian American employment has increased rapidly in all sectors of the U.S. economy by 108 percent in the private sector between 1978 and 1990. No other group approaches these rates of employment growth.