When researchers sent 80,000 fake résumés to jobs they found: -racial discrimination: employers gave 10% more call backs to White vs. Black applications -no gender discrimination -no LGBT discrimination One thing predicted less discrimination: a centralized HR operation. nytimes.com/2024/04/08/ups…
Although there was no overall gender discrimination, some companies favored men (manufacturing) and others favored women (apparel stores). There was also a small interaction between race & gender: being female helped White but hurt Black applicants. nytimes.com/2024/04/08/ups…
@jayvanbavel Very much on the fence about studies like these. Scientific insights are great but the real costs are high wasting a company’s time and paying employees combing through fake resumes. And it’s not like this is a one-off study. Every year I see several studies with this design
@jayvanbavel 10% on 80,000 seems like inherent statistical variance.
@jayvanbavel How do you make LGBTQ or black inferences from names? Without going out on extremes that come across as incredible? Why does a narrow margin of difference (10%), in an unscientific experiment, lead to any conclusion other than inconclusive & not even informative?
@jayvanbavel Would be interesting to see if it's very regionally concentrated, and if any went the other way.
@jayvanbavel "Names are race related... has Nothing to do with culture.... nooooooo.... THEY are racist... not me who believes names are race based"
@jayvanbavel An important question is whether firms that discriminate perform worse. If so, they should be driven out by competition with non-discriminatory firms. If they perform (weakly) better, then there are a host of more interesting questions to ask.
@jayvanbavel Ethnic Discrimination in the Dutch Labor Market dare.uva.nl/search?identif…