Apparently, American companies still discriminate on the basis of race while vetting and hiring new candidates. A study released by Harvard, the Institute for Social Research in Norway and Northwestern University looked at hiring practices in the United States from 1989 to 2015.
The results were unsettling. According to the study, anti-black racism has stayed the same in the United States since 1989.
Discrimination in hiring is still a serious problem
Resumes don’t show a photo of the job applicant, but they do reveal the applicant’s name. In the study, resumes that featured names that were either stereotypically Black or Latino received fewer responses than names that were stereotypically Caucasian. Also, among the applicants that showed up for in-person interviews, those that appeared Latino or Black received fewer job opportunities.
In general, “white applicants receive 36 [percent] more callbacks than equally qualified African-Americans.” Furthermore, “white applicants receive on average 24 [percent] more callbacks than Latinos.” Since 1989, there has not been any improvement in hiring opportunities for black Americans. Nevertheless, there has been a slight improvement for Latin Americans.
The study only looks at hiring discrimination
The study only looked at hiring discrimination, not other forms of discrimination that happen after an employee is hired, such as discrimination in pay rates, job opportunities and during layoffs and terminations. Nevertheless, the findings are distressing. These findings could explain why the gaps between the wealth of blacks and whites and between the rates of employment versus unemployment continue to remain the same.
Did you lose a job opportunity because of discrimination?
If you suspect that you lost a job opportunity because of racial discrimination, you may want to investigate what happened. If your situation warrants an employment discrimination lawsuit, you may be able to gather enough evidence to prove that discrimination occurred in your case. As a part of such legal proceedings, plaintiffs can subpoena the hiring and employment records of a particular business to determine if there are any unusual hiring trends that appear to unfairly disqualify applicants from different races, while offering employment to applicants of other races.