Imagine that two recent high-school graduates apply for low-skill jobs advertised in the newspaper. The jobs include waiting tables, dishwashing, and working in warehouses. One man is white and admits to serving 18 months in prison for selling cocaine. The other applicant is an African-American man without a criminal record. Which applicant has a greater chance of being called back for a second interview? In a carefully designed experiment with college students posing as job applicants, the white applicant with a criminal record was called back 17 percent of the time, while the crime-free African-American applicant was called back only 14 percent of the time. In other words, the study implies that the disadvantage of being African American is roughly equivalent to the disadvantage of spending 18 months in prison.
This experiment in Milwaukee revealed substantial racial discrimination in hiring for low-skill jobs. According to Devah Pager, the researcher who conducted the experiment, race remains a large barrier in entry-level jobs, where affirmative action is not practiced. Employers don’t invest much time in gathering information on applicants, and look for a quick signal of the suitability of an applicant. Given the prevalent stereotypes about young black men, race continues to send a negative signal to employers.
In another experiment, economists responded in writing to help-wanted ads in Chicago and in Boston, using hypothetical names that were likely to be identified by employers as either white or African American. Applicants named Greg Kelly or Emily Walsh were 50 percent more likely to be called for interviews than those named Jamal Jackson or Lakisha Washington. Having a white-sounding name on an application was equivalent to about eight additional years of work experience. The researchers experimented with different résumés for both types of applicants. Adding work experience and computer skills increased the likelihood of interviews by 30 percent for white-sounding applicants but only 9 percent for those whose names suggested an African-American background.