Data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics supports predictions from the minority vulnerability thesis concerning the determinants of job layoffs among African Americans and Whites who work in upper-middle-class occupations. Specifically, after controlling for seniority, layoffs for AfricanAmericans are relatively unstructured by traditional stratification-based causal factors, namely, background socioeconomic status, human-capital credentials, and job/labor market characteristics. Analyses also indicate that racial differences in the determinants of layoffs are more pronounced in nonservice-based than service-based firms in the private sector and in the private sector relative to the public sector.KEY WORDS: job layoffs; workplace; racial inequality.In the last decade and a half, a developing line of sociological research on racial stratification in the workplace has focused on African Americans and Whites who occupy relatively privileged positions in the American occupational structure (for reviews see Patillo-McCoy, 1999; Wilson et al., 1999). This research has shed light on the dynamics of inequality among a growing segment of the increasingly differentiated African American population. Sociologists have documented that in recent decades African Americans have increased their representation in upper-tier occupational categories-namely, those that include managers, executives,