President Jimmy Carter consolidated all federal agencies that were required by law to follow affirmative action into the Department of Labor (Brown). Before Carter did this, each agency handled affirmative action in its own individual way. However, some were not as consistent as other agencies. He created the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Program (OFCCP) in 1978 to ensure compliance with the affirmative action policies (Brown).
Affirmative action has had its greatest amount of success in city, state, and federal government jobs. Slowly, the minority employment levels in these jobs began to generally mirror the relative minority population. Since the 1960s the area of law enforcement witnessed the greatest increase in minority applicants, and in jobs offered to minorities. This should be viewed as an extremely positive thing, because prior to affirmative action these jobs were almost completely closed off to minorities and woman. The influx has been greatest in the area of government, state and city, because this type of work is easier for affirmative action to watch over and regulate. Affirmative action has experienced considerably less success in integration in big business, such as General Motors, RJR Nabisco, and Microsoft. This is do to the fact that big business' often employ entire towns or regions so the minority employee percentage is generally representative the town's minority population. This is why big business has been more resistant to affirmative action and harder to regulate (Ryan 37). .
Long ago, the government sanctioned these affirmative action policies in order to create an equal opportunity for people of all races. In a time when an obvious discriminatory attitude toward minorities could be felt, affirmative action came to the rescue and helped to push equality and equal opportunity. Minorities could get jobs because they deserved them and the government as much.