are_emily_and_greg_more_employable_than_lakisha_and_jamal

Abstract

• Experiment on racial discrimination in the labor market conducted by Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan.

• Method: Sent fictitious resumes to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago with randomly assigned African American or White-sounding names.

• Findings:

  • Resumes with White names received 50% more callbacks for interviews.

  • Callbacks were more responsive to resume quality for White names compared to African American names.

  • Racism in hiring practices is evident across various occupations, industries, and employer sizes.

  • Results show little correlation between inferred social class from names and callbacks.

Introduction

• Significant racial inequality persists in the U.S. labor market:

  • African Americans are twice as likely to be unemployed as Whites.

  • African American workers earn approximately 25% less than their White counterparts.

• Debate on whether employers favor White candidates over ostensibly identical Black candidates:

  • Some believe employer bias exists due to prejudice or perceived productivity linked to race.

  • Others argue that societal changes and affirmative action have minimized discrimination.

• Difficulty in empirically testing these claims due to data limitations leading to this field experiment.

Methodology

Experimental Design

• Use of correspondence testing methodology to send resumes in response to job ads.

• Employment ads targeted:

  • Located in Boston and Chicago, covering job categories like sales, administrative support, clerical, and customer services.

• Resumes varied in quality: two higher quality and two lower quality, with names randomly assigned (e.g., Emily for White, Lakisha for African American).

Resume Quality

• Higher quality resumes contained:

  • More labor market experience, certification, language skills, and honors.

• 1300 employment ads targeted with about 5000 resumes sent.

• Callbacks measured by:

  • Comparison of rates for resumes with White versus African American names.

Results

Key Findings

• White-named applicants needed to send about 10 resumes for one callback, while Black-named applicants needed to send 15.

• Callback rates significantly higher for White-sounding names; equivalent to possessing about 8 additional years of experience.

• Quality of resume impact:

  • White applicants with higher quality resumes obtained 30% more callbacks.

  • African American applicants’ higher quality resumes did not increase callbacks significantly.

Neighborhood Effects

• Resumes assigned random addresses showed that residing in wealthier or more educated neighborhoods benefited all applicants, but did not disproportionately help African Americans.

• Statistical analysis revealed racial gap in callbacks consistent across different job categories and employers regardless of their size or stated commitment to equal opportunity.

Interpretation of Findings

Racial Gap in Callbacks

• The results clearly indicate discrimination based on perceived race when reviewing resumes.

• Employers appear to employ race as a factor, confirming the existence of discrimination in hiring decisions.

Other Possible Explanations

• Potential implications of social class inferred from names were minimal based on birth records of mothers’ education.

• Limited support for the social background hypothesis as a confounding variable.

Theoretical Implications

• Results align poorly with existing models of discrimination (both taste-based and statistical discrimination).

• Suggests other unexamined factors influence callbacks possibly linked to employer prejudices and heuristics in screening resumes.

Conclusion

• The experiment indicates that African Americans face differential treatment throughout the hiring process, impeding their success in the labor market.

• The significant callback gap highlights that improving observable skills alone may not suffice to close the racial gap.

• Training programs must be aligned with systemic changes to be effective in mitigating these disparities.