Chart: Black, female, and highly educated workers are more likely to work in the public sector: Demographics of Virginia wage and salary workers, 2019–2023

Table 2

Black, female, and highly educated workers are more likely to work in the public sector: Demographics of Virginia wage and salary workers, 2019–2023

	Private sector	Federal govt.	State govt.	Local govt.
Education
Less than HS	8.4%	1.0%	2.2%	3.2%
High school	24.2%	14.6%	14.2%	15.2%
Some college	28.1%	25.3%	24.4%	23.1%
Bachelor’s degree	24.4%	28.1%	25.5%	28.5%
Advanced degree	14.9%	31.1%	33.7%	30.0%
Race and ethnicity
White non-Hispanic	58.5%	57.0%	63.7%	66.3%
Black non-Hispanic	18.1%	19.1%	21.2%	20.4%
Hispanic	11.5%	11.1%	5.7%	6.5%
Other non-Hispanic	12.0%	12.7%	9.4%	6.7%
Female	47.7%	35.1%	57.3%	64.5%
Immigrant	17.6%	12.7%	11.2%	9.4%
Average age	41.1%	41.6%	44.1%	45.2%

Notes: Statistics shown are for wage and salary workers, ages 18–64, working 35 or more hours per week. Hispanic refers to Hispanic workers of any race, while white, Black, and other refer to non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic Blacks, and other racial categories, respectively.

Source: Authors' analysis of American Community Survey microdata, 2019–2023 5-Year Sample (Ruggles et al. 2025)

This chart appears in:

Previous chart: « States that ban or limit collective bargaining rights for government workers have fewer union members: Collective bargaining rights and the share of full-time state and local government workers ages 18–64 belonging to a union, states ranked in order from lowest to highest by union density

Next chart: Virginia has low union membership in both the public and private sectors: Private- and public-sector union density by state, full-time wage and salary workers ages 18–64, September 2020–August 2025 »