Ethnic Penalties in Unemployment and Occupational Attainment: Evidence for Britain

Abstract

In spite of progress made since the 1950s and 1960s, black, Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi workers remain disadvantaged relative to whites in terms of their labour market opportunities. In general, they experience higher rates of unemployment and tend to be under-represented in higher paid, non-manual occupations. They can therefore be said to pay an ethnic penalty in the competition for jobs although the penalties paid vary considerably between the minority groups. In this paper we examine the different employment experiences of black, Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi men and women in terms of their unemployment propensities and occupational attainment.We use maximum likelihood methods to show that the ethnic penalties experienced by minority workers are not fully explained by differences in human capital endowments and personal characteristics. We conclude that at least some of the disadvantage experienced by ethnic minorities in the British labour market can be attributed to discriminatory selection practices by employers.

Ethnicizing Employability : Governing the Unemployed in Labour Market Projects in Sweden

“…However, the question of how un/ employability is ethnicized seems not to be equally researched. Quantitatively oriented research dedicated to measuring the disadvantages of ethnicized groups in working life is more common (e.g., Carmichael and Woods 2000;Conley and Topa 2002;Leslie and Drinkwater 1998). Since the situation of migrants and ethnic minorities in general -and their place in the labour market in particular -is a political issue of great concern in many countries, quantitative research illustrating the disadvantaged situation of migrants is most important and useful, not least from a policymaking perspective.…”

The joint effect of ethnicity and gender on occupational segregation. An approach based on the Mutual Information Index

“…However, for ethnic minority people who earned their educational credentials in the country where they work, the consequences of human capital should be similar, in principle, to the outcomes observed among women and men: the higher the education level achieved, the greater the potential for making inroads into jobs with meritocratic points of entry. In summary, if achieved status and merit bu er some of the discrimination brought about by ascribed status (Carmichael and Woods 2000;Mintz and Krymkowski 2011;Reskin, McBrier, and Kmec 1999), we should observe that segregation jointly induced by ethnicity and gender, as well as any multiplicative interaction between these two dimensions, diminishes once we control for human capital.…”

“…Except for overtly racist and marginal groups, the opinion that certain ethnicities are better suited for performing some tasks is not normatively accepted (Jacobs and Blair-Loy 1996). Still, ethnic prejudices appear to in uence recruitment, job allocation, and promotion (Carmichael and Woods 2000;Castilla 2008;Catanzarite 2003;Moss conducted by the General Register O ce for Scotland, a part of the devolved Scottish Administration, and we do not use these data in this article.…”

“…Nevertheless, many observers have concluded that there are substantial di erences in economic performance between people with immigrant origins and the rest of the labor force (Berthoud 2000;Clark and Drinkwater 2007;Fernández 2010;Heath and Yu 2005). For example, ethnic minority entrepreneurs concentrate in the retail, catering, and transport sectors (Parker 2004) but are underrepresented in professional and intermediate non-manual occupations (Carmichael and Woods 2000).…”

“…Second, it is reasonable to think that at least some of the segregation that we attribute to ethnicity and gender is really due to di erences in the stock of education and potential work experience accrued by women, men, and ethnic groups (for a similar concern, see, among others, Carmichael and Woods 2000;Clark and Drinkwater 2007;Jacobs and Blair-Loy 1996;Reskin and Cassirer 1996). To address this objection, we control for di erences in the age pro le and educational attainment of the working population.…”