Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgements 7
The Authors 8
Glossary 9
Summary 10
1. Background 16
1.1. Introduction 16
1.2. Ethnic minority penalties in the labour market 16
1.3. Policy measures to reduce inequality 18
1.4. Recruitment practices and discrimination in employment 20
1.5. Field experiment approaches: actors and correspondence tests 21
2. Test design 24
2.1. A correspondence test 24
2.2. Number of applications per set 25
2.3. Conveying racial identity 25
2.4. Cities 28
2.5. Occupations 28
2.6. Identifying job adverts for the study 29
2.7. Developing applications 30
2.8. Assessing response 32
2.8.1. Addresses 32
2.8.2. Email and telephone details 33
2.9. Sample of vacancies 33
2.9.1. Size of sample achieved 33
2.9.2. Occupations 34
2.9.3. Locations 35
2.9.4. Market sector 36
2.9.5. Size of organisation 37
2.9.6. Gender 37
2.9.7. Application process variables 38
3. Results 40
3.1. Overall racial discrimination 40
3.2. Alternative presentations of the level of discrimination 42
3.3. Discrimination for individual ethnic groups 44
3.4. Occupation and sector 47
3.5. Size of employer 49
3.6. Area and gender 50
3.7. Variation in the application process 51
4. Concisions 56
Appendix 58
Appendix A. Technical appendix 58
Appendix B. Pracedures document for team producing applications 60
Appendix C. Occupation descriptions used to identify eligible vacancies 70
References 76
Table 2.1. ResuIts of testing of name recognition 27
Table 2.2. Names used in study 28
Table 2.3. Locations in sample 35
Table 2.4. Market sector and industry classification of employers in sample 36
Table 2.5. Number of employees at site 37
Table 2.6. Gender of applications 37
Table 2.7. Occupation of applications by gender 38
Table 2.8. Application process for sample of vacancies 39
Table 3.1. Overall racial discrimination 41
Table 3.2. Treatment with in sets of applications 42
Table 3.3. Success rates and an alternative presentation of discrimination 43
Table 3.4. Discrimination for individual ethnic groups 45
Table 3.5. Success rates for individual ethnic groups 46
Table 3.6. Discrimination by occupation 48
Table 3.7. Discrimination by employment sector of employer 48
Table 3.8. Type of application for public and private sector 49
Table 3.9. Discrimination by number of employees at site 50
Table 3.10. Discrimination by location of employer 50
Table 3.11. Racial discrimination by gender 51
Table 3.12. Discrimination and recruitment process variables 52
Table 3.13. Number of employees at site by type of application 53
Table 3.14. Format of application by mode of despatch 53
Figure 2.1. Occupations in sample 35