Although open racism in America and other European nations is almost extinct, the vice still exists among some employers. A critical study on the employment criteria between the African-Americans and the Whites draws some observable disparities. The disparities prove difficult to measure because the researchers are not employers. Probably the employment criterion is far beyond racial discrimination.
The employers can base their recruitment on education quality, work experience, and not race, while others can base their recruitment on the identity of the race. On the other hand, the use of audit studies may generate poor results because the auditors may base their conclusion on what the society holds about racial discrimination.
Therefore, although there is uniformity in the racial discrimination among employers, statistically, researchers are unable to measure the elimination criteria applied. In their study, Bertrand and Mullainathan look at the labor market (recruitment criteria) in Chicago and Boston by posing as job seekers.
The following discussion ascertains the statistical findings of the aforementioned researchers on the inconsistency of employment opportunities, between the African-Americans and the whites.
To overcome the aforementioned loopholes in the study of racial inequality in the job market, Bertrand and Mullainathan posed as job seekers by creating many resumes. Physical involvement in the study was challenging because of biasness among the researcher/auditors or the employers would not readily show the racial gap in their companies.
Bertrand and Mullainathan considered crucial issues like education quality, work experience, social background, and neighborhood. For instance, the African-Americans and the whites have different and distinct names that any American or European would easily identify. First, half of the resumes had white names and the other half African-American names.
Secondly, a group of the resumes with white names had high education qualifications, which was similar to the African-Americans. Thirdly, the last group (Whites and African-Americans) had lower education qualifications. Basing on the local newspapers job adverts in sales, administration, clerical, and customer services the researchers deployed the resumes to the respective employers.
The sweeping assumption was that all employers would easily categorize the names as per the race. The use of newspaper as the only source of job outlet is a weakness in the experiment. However, the next discussion expounds on the key findings of Bertrand and Mullainathan.
Statistically, Bertrand and Mullainathan calculated the call back rates as per the race, which was in the form of names. The names purporting as white people received 9.65 percent calls inviting them for interviews while those with African-American names received 6.45 percent invitations for the interview. Although the applicants had similar qualifications or form of resumes, there was a 50 percent variation in the recruitment.
More over, in cases where the male African-Americans applied they had a lower chance when compared to their female counterparts. Thus, from the variation in call back rates, Bertrand and Mullainathan conclude with all other factors like social background and education constant employers practice racial discrimination.
Ideally, all the people with similar qualifications/resume quality regardless of the race should receive at least an invitation for the interview. Unfortunately, the significant difference in the invitation for interview has a positive relation to eventual employment.
In their discussion, the two researchers disqualify the relationship between occupation, racial discrimination, and wages. Therefore, the difference in wage allocation, in industries cannot measure racial discrimination, because the rate of callback varies among the industries.