A 2003 Examine Discovered that Black School Grads Had the Similar Job Callback Possibilities as White Convicted Felons—Has Something Modified?

In 2003, sociologist Devah Pager despatched a shockwave by way of the employment world with an audit research that exposed a brutal reality about American hiring practices. Getting down to uncover the results of getting a prison report on employment, she discovered one thing that made nationwide information: Black males with out a prison background had been referred to as again for interviews at about the identical charge as white males with felony convictions on their purposes.

This wasn’t about prison justice—it was about deeply embedded racial bias in hiring. Twenty years later, has something modified?

The reply, in response to the newest analysis, is a convincing “No.”

The Examine That Uncovered America’s Hiring Actuality

Pager’s 2003 research aimed to analyze the employment penalties of incarceration—an easy query in prison justice coverage. Her analysis workforce despatched out fictitious job purposes in Milwaukee and in contrast callback charges for candidates with and with out prison data.

Whereas Pager designed her research to measure how prison data have an effect on employment, it was a longstanding downside. “Previously incarcerated individuals nationwide have an unemployment charge of 27%, which is akin to what the U.S. skilled throughout the Nice Melancholy,” Wanda Bertram, a communications strategist on the Jail Coverage Initiative, advised Investopedia.

However Pager inadvertently documented one thing extra profound: that racial bias is so deeply embedded in hiring practices {that a} Black applicant’s race alone created the identical employment barrier as a prison report. The research turned well-known not for what it revealed in regards to the impression of incarceration on hiring, however for what it uncovered about racial discrimination extra broadly.

“When you concentrate on the immense financial disparity between black and white communities, it is simply clear that there are such a lot of extra forces at play than merely a prison record-related stigma,” mentioned David Pitts, vp of the justice and security division on the City Institute.

As hiring turns into more and more automated—an estimated 98.4% of Fortune 500 corporations now use some type of automation of their hiring course of—research are discovering AI hiring methods are replicating the identical biases, doubtlessly making discrimination much less seen and harder to problem.

No Progress in 25 Years

Essentially the most complete evaluation of racial hiring discrimination ever performed reveals a sobering reality: regardless of a long time of civil rights laws and altering social attitudes, the extent of discrimination Black and Latino job seekers face has barely budged.

A landmark 2023 Northwestern College meta-analysis examined knowledge from 90 subject experiments performed going again a long time, analyzing greater than 174,000 job purposes throughout six Western nations. The findings are stark: white candidates acquired, on common, 36% extra callbacks than Black candidates and 24% extra callbacks than Latino candidates with in any other case similar resumes. Simply as troubling: the research discovered that there was “nearly no change over time” in employment discrimination.

Current survey knowledge reveals how this discrimination is skilled. About 4 in 10 Black employees (41%) say they’ve skilled discrimination or been handled unfairly by an employer in hiring, pay, or promotions due to their race or ethnicity, in response to a 2023 Pew Analysis Middle survey. This compares to decrease shares of Asian (25%), Hispanic (20%), and white (8%) employees reporting related experiences.

The discrimination would not finish as soon as somebody will get employed. The information reveals continuous and widespread wage disparities throughout racial teams. As well as, in response to a 2025 Boston School analysis assessment, black employees stay extra weak all through their careers, being “the primary to be laid off from struggling corporations” and dealing with “longer spells of unemployment” once they do lose jobs. Throughout recessions, Black employees usually tend to be displaced than their white counterparts, making a cycle the place they have to repeatedly navigate the identical discriminatory hiring processes.

Allegations of racial discrimination are additionally rising. In 2024, the Equal Employment Alternative Fee (EEOC) acquired over 500,000 calls and 81,055 new prices, with racial discrimination prices growing considerably over the earlier 12 months.

The Backside Line

Greater than 20 years after Pager’s research, the elemental downside persists. More moderen analysis reveals that racial bias in hiring hasn’t modified, and using AI in hiring threatens to repeat discriminatory patterns in much less seen methods.