Discrimination in the Job Market in the United States

The study shows that job applicants with white-sounding names receive more callbacks than those with black-sounding names, despite similar qualifications.

Yongoh Moon

Source: Bertrand, Marianne, and Sendhil Mullainathan. “Discrimination in the Job Market in the United States.” IPA, 17 Apr. 2013, poverty-action.org/study/discrimination-job-market-united-states. 

Annotated Bibliography

The study conducted by Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan investigates racial discrimination in the U.S. job market through a field experiment. The researchers sent 5,000 resumes to 1,300 job ads in Boston and Chicago, manipulating the applicants' race through their names. Resumes with white-sounding names received 50% more callbacks than those with black-sounding names, demonstrating significant racial bias in hiring practices. Additionally, while the quality of resumes increased callback rates for those with white names, it had no effect for those with black names. This study reveals persistent racial discrimination in hiring practices and suggests that improving resume quality alone cannot mitigate this bias. Moreover, even employers who advertised as "Equal Opportunity Employers" exhibited similar levels of discrimination. These results indicate that implicit biases are deeply rooted, affecting the employment prospects of African Americans regardless of their qualifications. For policymakers, this underscores the need for more effective interventions beyond current affirmative action measures. Blind recruitment processes and implicit bias training for employers could be potential solutions to mitigate these biases. Personally, the study's results are disheartening but crucial for understanding the depth of systemic racial discrimination in employment. This study clearly shows that economic inequality based on race exists. In particular, it supports the argument of Critical Race Theory that racial prejudice and systemic barriers still exist even for highly educated minorities, as evidenced by the finding that the quality of resumes had no effect on callback rates for black applicants. This is an important example of how racial discrimination actually operates in the labor market.