A Demographic Portrait of Asian Americans

Asian Americans are now concentrated in two types of occupations: high-status professional and technical occupations, and low-skilled service and manual jobs. Given their positions in the occupational structure, it is not surprising that Asian Americans tend to live in major metropolitan areas, which offer such job opportunities. Census tabulations show that Asian Americans with a single ethnicity made up 4.5 percent of all urban residents, compared with a mere 0.5 percent of all rural residents. Between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas, there is a similar gap; the share of Asian Americans was 4.3 percent among all residents in metropolitan areas and 0.8 percent among all residents in nonmetropolitan areas. Not surprisingly, the lowest presence of Asian Americans is found among rural residents in nonmetropolitan areas, at 0.3 percent.