The Role of Demographic Context in Shaping Hiring Discrimination: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment

• In Event: 3544 - Labor Market

Abstract

How do minority concentrations shape the dynamics of race- and ethnic-based hiring discrimination that take place within urban labor markets? This paper synthesizes two branches of labor market stratification literature that developed independently of one another to theorize how demographic contexts of labor markets conditions race- and ethnic-based hiring discrimination that manifest within them. On the one hand, the experimental studies on labor market discrimination offer a sharp tool to derive causal estimates of racial bias in hiring, but undertheorize the contexts in which discriminatory behaviors take place. On the other hand, the quantitative literature linking demographic composition to various forms of social stratification highlights the role of urban contexts but lacks the methodological tool to assess how labor market discrimination operates at hiring interface. Both literatures underexplore the role of Asians and Latinos. Relying on a unique large-scale field experiment that involves submitting nearly 12,000 fictitious resumes to real job postings across 50 major urban areas, I found that the Black-White callback gap widens in cities with a high concentration of Blacks, confirming the ‘visibility-discrimination’ thesis. I also show that this thesis cannot be extended straightforwardly to other minority-white comparisons. I find a small and inconsistent narrowing effect of percent Asian on the Asian-White hiring gap. I find no evidence of an association between Latino concentration and Latinos’ labor market outcomes relative to Whites. The paper concludes with theoretical implications for studies that operate at the intersection of race and stratification, labor market and work, and urban inequalities.

Author

• Quan D. Mai, Rutgers University