A project to foster diversity among Milwaukee’s creative professionals starts with a hard look at the whiteness of those fields.

Milwaukee has been, for decades, one of the most segregated metropolitan areas in the United States, a place where racial inequality is entrenched and pervasive. These disparities are particularly pronounced in the region’s labor market, where racial gaps in employment, earnings, and mobility are among the widest in the nation. This study presents the first systematic overview of racial disparities in a part of Milwaukee’s labor market that has attracted increased attention in recent years: occupations in the “creative sector.”