About half of the Jews of New Orleans who are employed are in wholesale-retail occupations and an additional 20 percent are in the professions, a population study of the Jewish community here has established. The concentration of the Jewish “labor force” in the wholesale-retail trades and in professional services is one of the characteristics which the Jewish community here shares with other Jewish communities in the United States.
The term “labor force” refers to the males and females in the Jewish community over the age of 16 who are employed or looking for work. It was found that eight out often of the males could thus be classified and one out of three of the females; total figures show that more than half the Jewish population over the age of 16 is in the labor force.
Jews are heavily represented in the medical and legal professions as well as in the semi-professional occupations. The other appreciably large group of the Jewish labor force can be found in construction, manufacturing and transportation. This classification includes 12 percent of the Jewish labor force. In the total white labor force about 37 percent are employed in this classification.
Of the total Jewish labor force, almost one-half are self-employed. This accounts largely for the concentration of Jewish employment in the wholesale-retail and professional fields, since these offer the greatest opportunities for self-employment. The study shows that fully 62 percent of the Jewish males engaged in these two fields are self-employed, compared with 38 percent for the remainder of the Jewish labor force.
The study offers interesting data with regard to the professional and semi-professional occupational grouping. These occupations include four times as many males as females, with the major fields for the males being medicine, semi-professional occupations and legal; almost half of the females are teachers and another 25 percent each are in medicine and miscellaneous professional activities.
OF EVERY 100 JEWS, 63 ARE MARRIED. 22 SINGLE AND 11 WIDOWED
The survey established that of every 100 Jews over the age of 15 in New Orleans, 63 are married, 22 are single and 11 widowed. Of the remainder, two are divorced or separated and two did not supply information on their marital status. While the single group is 22 percent of the total, almost a quarter of these are under the age of 20, and one-half are under 30 years of age.
A large proportion of the 11 percent widowed are women. This fact is accounted for by the greater longevity of women and the relatively greater ease with which widowers remarry than widows. The proportion of the New Orleans Jewish population divorced or separated is small.
The study bears out the frequently advanced thesis that Jews marry later in life than others in the white population. This may be accounted for in New Orleans by the problem of marrying within the relatively small Jewish community. Then again, it can be correlated with the high degree of educational attainment and professional aspirations of the Jewish population.
In comparison with the total white population of New Orleans, there are proportionately fewer married Jews in each age category under 30; after 30 this reverses and there are more married individuals among Jews than among the total white population.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
