Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination

We study race in the labor market by sending fictitious resumes to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers. To manipulate perceived race, resumes are randomly assigned African-American- or White-sounding names. White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews. Callbacks are also...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American economic review 2004-09, Vol.94 (4), p.991-1013
Main Authors: Bertrand, Marianne, Mullainathan, Sendhil
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Affirmative action
African Americans
Auditions
Auditors
Audits
Discrimination
Economic theory
Employers
Employment
Employment discrimination
Employment interviews
Experiments
Gender discrimination
Given names
Hiring
Job search
Labor economics
Labor force
Labor market
Labor markets
Labour market
Mothers
Names
Neighborhoods
Occupations
Race
Racial discrimination
Racial inequality
Resumes
Reverse discrimination
Sex discrimination
Social classes
Studies
U.S.A
White people
ZIP codes
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Summary:We study race in the labor market by sending fictitious resumes to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers. To manipulate perceived race, resumes are randomly assigned African-American- or White-sounding names. White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews. Callbacks are also more responsive to resume quality for White names than for African-American ones. The racial gap is uniform across occupation, industry, and employer size. We also find little evidence that employers are inferring social class from the names. Differential treatment by race still appears to still be prominent in the U.S. labor market.
ISSN:0002-8282
1944-7981
DOI:10.1257/0002828042002561