Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment

By D. Pager, Bruce Western, Bart Bonikowski. American Sociological Review, 2009

1,083 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Decades of racial progress have led some researchers and policymakers to doubt that discrimination remains an important cause of economic inequality. To study contemporary discrimination, we conducted a field experiment in the low-wage labor market of New York City, recruiting white, black, and Latino job applicants who were matched on demographic characteristics and interpersonal skills. These applicants were given equivalent résumés and sent to apply in tandem for hundreds of entry-level jobs. Our results show that black applicants were half as likely as equally qualified whites to receive a callback or job offer. In fact, black and Latino applicants with clean backgrounds fared no better than white applicants just released from prison. Additional qualitative evidence from our applicants' experiences further illustrates the multiple points at which employment trajectories can be deflected by various forms of racial bias. These results point to the subtle yet systematic forms of discrimination that continue to shape employment opportunities for low-wage workers.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/641b12df54a3d853bad273bf5fed2c0965936f83

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Citations in the corpus

Racial Disparities in Health Status and Access to Healthcare: The Continuation of Inequality in the United States Due to Structural Racism (2018, background): “Finally, employers encouraged African American testers to apply for different jobs than the ones initially advertised (Pager et al. 2009).”
Disparities at the intersection of marginalized groups (2016, background): “Others have documented higher callback rates for whites with criminal records than blacks without one, despite equivalent resumes [28, 33].”
Concealable Stigma and Occupational Segregation (2015, neutral): “…discrimination and a desire to keep certain people out of certain kinds of jobs—for instance, African Americans from jobs involving frequent contact with customers (Pager, Western, and Bonikowski, 2009) or women from managerial positions (Kanter, 1977)—can contribute to occupational segregation.”
Whitened Résumés (2016, background): “The résumé-screening stage of the employee-selection process powerfully shapes individuals’ subsequent access to opportunities and can serve as a major barrier to employment for racial minorities (Pager, 2003; Pager, Western, and Bonikowski, 2009).”
The Positive Consequences of Negative Stereotypes (2014, background): “There is strong evidence that black men and gay men face discrimination in the U.S. labor market (Bertrand and Mullainathan 2004; Pager, Western, and Bonikowski 2009; Tilcsik 2011).”
Job Seeking: The Process and Experience of Looking for a Job (2020, methodology): “In addition, individuals with a criminal record have an exceedingly hard time getting an interview (Pager 2003, Pager et al. 2009), and unemployed and long-term unemployed job seekers receive fewer responses to applications than employed job seekers (Eriksson&Lagerström 2006).”
Field experiments across the social sciences (2017, background): “F or p er so na l u se o nl y. SO43CH03-Baldassarri ARI 20 July 2017 11:0 2003, Bertrand & Mullainathan 2004, Pager & Quillian 2005, Correll et al. 2007, Banerjee et al. 2009, Pager et al. 2009).”
The individual experience of unemployment. (2012, methodology): “…individuals were recruited to pose as job seekers applying for a total of 240 entrylevel positions in New York City over a ninemonth period in 2004 (Pager et al. 2009) individuals were clean-cut and matched with respect to social skills, interview and test performance , and physical attractiveness.”
Compounded Disadvantage: Race, Incarceration, and Wage Growth (2011, background): “Racial differences in the stigma of incarceration may lead to outright disadvantage in the hiring process (Pager 2003; Pager et al. 2009), leading to lower employment stability for blacks after release from prison, or to other employment decisions such as denial of promotion or lower starting wages,”