California residents may be interested in a study that was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
According to this report, over the past quarter century, there has been no decline in hiring discrimination against African-Americans. In 1989, white applicants received 36 percent higher callbacks than African-Americans applying for the same position and 24 percent more than Latinos.
After carrying out this report, the Northwestern University and Harvard University researchers involved in the study concluded that there has been no major change in discrimination levels against African-American and Latino workers in the past 25 years. To reach this conclusion, researchers sent out fake resumes with names that were easily identifiable as ethnic. The resumes had equivalent qualifications on them.
Researchers have long seen a correlation between a person’s name and whether he or she gets a response to his or her resume. Those in the position to make hiring decisions can do so simply based on the name a person puts down on an email.
In these studies, researchers controlled for factors like levels of education, the gender of the applicant and the part of the country where the applicant was applying. There are other elements, including the way the applicants sounded, that impacted their chances of getting hired. The research showed that individuals whose dialect ‘sounded white” had a higher chance of being told that a job position was still available.
The Harvard Business Review was told by researchers that the results they got provided them with a strong rationale for affirmative action policies. They state that whether it is a conscious decision, bias continues to affect the decision-making of employers.
An employee rights lawyer can help workers and job applicants who feel that they have experienced employment discrimination. Whether it is age, race, religion or gender that is the basis for discrimination, attorneys can help people learn about their rights and set processes in motion that are designed to help their clients receive fair treatment or compensation for unfair treatment.