Opinion ID: 501743
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: External Labor Force Data

Text: 74 The EEOC claims that the external labor force data introduced by Sears on the issue of differences in male and female interest, which the court found corroborate[d] Sears' strong evidence of female lack of interest in commission sales and in ... particular product lines, id. at 1314, instead supports the EEOC's claim that Sears discriminated against women in hiring. The EEOC cites various nationwide statistics for female percentages of salespeople in various product lines and compares those figures with the smaller figures at Sears. Sears responds that these comparisons are inaccurate because the nationwide data does not reflect the breakdown of noncommission versus commission salespersons depending on product line existing at Sears. According to Sears, the product line data included vast numbers of department store clerks who did not sell on commission and whose jobs in no way resembled those of commission salespeople at Sears, and other data for retail commission salespersons failed to indicate product line differences so that it included saleswomen selling items like fashions and furs which are seldom sold on commission on Sears. It is unclear whether the EEOC actually presented this argument to the district court. Indeed, EEOC expert Siskin rejected reliance on external labor force data in constructing his analyses. Issues not presented in district court are waived on appeal. See DeValk Lincoln Mercury v. Ford Motor Co., 811 F.2d 326, 338 (7th Cir.1987). In any event, considering the inaccuracies likely present in a comparison of the nationwide data with Sears data on this particular question, we cannot find that the district court erred in not concluding that external labor force data indicated hiring discrimination by Sears. 75 The EEOC attacks the court's conclusion that certain nationwide external labor force data for all employed commission salespersons reflected a lower female availability for commission sales positions during the years 1976 to 1980 than the EEOC estimated were available based on its sales pool. The EEOC argues that it is inappropriate to compare a nationwide static work force figure with Sears' hiring figures for various years. We agree that such a comparison can be misleading. As noted by this court in Movement for Opportunity & Equality v. General Motors Corp., 622 F.2d 1235, 1345 (7th Cir.1980), such cumulative snapshot statistics include hiring decisions for the past twenty to thirty years. Thus the statistics mask past discriminatory hiring decisions and should not be compared with female availability for commission sales positions during a recent fouryear period. See id.; United States v. City of Chicago, 549 F.2d 415, 435 (7th Cir.1977) (it is no defense to a charge of discrimination that not everyone else is in compliance with the law). 76 Nonetheless, we believe that the main purpose of this evidence according to the district court was not to show overall female availability for commission sales positions, but rather to further corroborate differences in male and female interest by product line. The court found that this national labor force data did corroborate female lack of interest in selling particular product lines, and we cannot say that this finding is clearly erroneous. To the extent that the usefulness of this static labor force evidence is subject to the same criticism of incorporating past discrimination, which we find doubtful when the evidence is used for the purpose of showing differences in men's and women's interest in particular product lines, we note that some of the evidence that the court found most significant related to comparisons of male- and female-owned businesses, which would not seem to be as subject to discrimination.