cquire and retain only the most efficient workers. In the everyday world, however, such an assumption is seldom valid. Thus, employers are tempted to continue practices which have the effect of defeating affirmative action goals.The demographics of the American workforce changed drama tically between the 1960s and the 1990s, and, at the beginning of the 1990s continues to change. The general trend has been for the workforce in the United States to becoming older, and to include higher proportions of racial and ethnic minorities, and women.The Anglo labor participation (employment) rate in 1987 was 60.3 percent, while the participation rate for Hispanics was 57.2 percent, and that for blacks was but 52.8 percent 3
(Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1988). In 1970, the participation rates for these population segments were 56 percent, 52 per cent, and 51 percent, respectively (Fullerton, & Tschetter, 1983). Magnifying the effect of these changing participation rates is the fact that the black and the Hispanic segments of the American population are growing at a faster rate than is the Anglo segment.
By 1995, the Anglo participation rate is expected to be 64 percent, while that for
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