The program enlarges the pool of qualified applicants to give everyone a fair chance. Affirmative action is a federal program which requires that any businesses which contract with the federal government make efforts to ensure that their workforce reflect the racial and gender diversity of the surrounding populace. There is still job discrimination against women and people of color. Of 91,000 complaints of job discrimination filed in 1995, half were upheld. The wage gap between whites and people of color and between men and women grew in the 1980s.
Unemployment remains higher for people of color.
This is useless data. What must be compared is not whites and people of color or men and women but people with exactly the same skills, experience, years on the job, etc. Arguments against affirmative action divert attention from the real issues of where American jobs have gone. There are jobs that happen to be performed in America. Certain types of jobs that used to be performed here are now more efficiently performed elsewhere, while jobs in service sector and high technology have vastly increased.