Discussion post (125 words) and reading summary (200 words)

Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment Author(s): Devah Pager, Bart Bonikowski and Bruce Western Source: American Sociological Review, Vol. 74, No. 5 (Oct., 2009), pp. 777-799 Published by: American Sociological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27736094 . Accessed: 02/10/2014 13:20

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Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment

Devah Pager Bruce Western

Princeton University Harvard University

Bart Bonikowski

Princeton University

Decades of racial progress have led some researchers and policymakers to doubt that

discrimination remains an important cause of economic inequality. To study

contemporary discrimination, we conducted afield experiment in the low-wage labor

market of New York City, recruiting white, black, and Latino job applicants who were

matched on demographic characteristics and interpersonal skills. These applicants were

given equivalent r?sum?s and sent to apply in tandem for hundreds of entry-level jobs.

Our results show that black applicants were half as likely as equally qualified whites to

receive a callback or job offer. In fact, black and Latino applicants with clean

backgrounds fared no better than white applicants just released from prison. Additional

qualitative evidence from our applicants' experiences further illustrates the multiple

points at which employment trajectories can be deflected by various forms of racial bias.

These results point to the subtle yet systematic forms of discrimination that continue to

shape employment opportunities for low-wage workers.

Despite legal bans on discrimination and the

liberalization of racial attitudes since the

1960s, racial differences in employment remain

among the most enduring forms of economic

inequality. Even in the tight labor market of the late 1990s, unemployment rates for black men

remained twice that for whites. Racial inequal

Direct all correspondence to Devah Pager,

Department of Sociology, Princeton University,

Princeton, NJ 08544 ([email protected]). This

research has been supported by grants from the

National Science Foundation, the National Institute

of Justice, the JEHT Foundation, the Princeton

Research Institute on the Region, and the Industrial

Relations Section of Princeton University. The first

author acknowledges generous support from NSF

CAREER, NIH K01, and a WT. Grant Scholars

Award. We also gratefully acknowledge the support of the New York City Commission on Human Rights, and Commissioner Patricia Gatling. Thanks to Glenn

Martin, Don Green, and the many workshop partic

ipants who provided generous feedback on earlier

drafts of this article.

ity in total joblessness?including those who exited the labor market?increased among young men during this period (H?lzer and Offner 2001). Against this backdrop of persist ent racial inequality, the question of employment discrimination has generated renewed interest.

Although there is much research on racial dis

parities in employment, the contemporary rel

evance of discrimination remains widely contested.

One line of research points to the persist ence of prejudice and discrimination as a criti cal factor shaping contemporary racial

disparities (Darity and Mason 1998; Roscigno et al. 2007). A series of studies relying on sur

veys and in-depth interviews finds that firms are reluctant to hire young minority men?espe

cially blacks?because they are seen as unreli

able, dishonest, or lacking in social or cognitive skills (H?lzer 1996; Kirschenman and

Neckerman 1991; Moss and Tilly 2001; Waldinger and Lichter 2003; Wilson 1996: chap. 5). The strong negative attitudes expressed by employers suggest that race remains highly

American Sociological Review, 2009, Vol. 74 (October:777-799)

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778 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

salient in employers' evaluations of workers.

At the same time, research relying on inter

views with employers leaves uncertain the

degree to which self-reported attitudes are influ ential in actual hiring decisions (Pager and

Quillian 2005). Indeed, Moss and Tilly (2001:151) report the puzzling finding that "businesses where a plurality of managers com

plained about black motivation are more likely to hire black men." In fact, across a series of

analyses controlling for firm size, starting wage, the percent black in the relevant portion of the

metropolitan area, and a business's average dis

tance from black residents in the area, Moss and

Tilly find that employers who overtly criticize the hard skills or interaction skills of black

workers are between two and four times more

likely to hire a black worker (pp. 151-52). Hiring decisions, of course, are influenced by a com

plex range of factors, racial attitudes being only one. Employers' stated preferences do not pro vide a clear picture of the degree to which neg ative attitudes about blacks translate into active forms of discrimination.

Research focusing on wages rather than

employment offers even less evidence of con

temporary discrimination. Neal and Johnson

(1996), for example, estimate wage differences between white, black, and Latino young men.

They find that two thirds of the black-white

gap in wages in 1990 to 1991 can be explained by race differences in cognitive test scores meas

ured 11 years earlier, and test scores fully explain wage differences between whites and Latinos. This and similar studies trace the

employment problems of young minority men

primarily to skill or other individual deficien

cies, rather than any direct effect of discrimi nation (Farkas and Vicknair 1996; Neal and Johnson 1996; O'Neill 1990). Heckman

(1998:101-102) puts the point most clearly, writing that "most of the disparity in earnings between blacks and whites in the labor market of the 1990s is due to differences in skills they bring to the market, and not to discrimination within the labor market." He goes on to describe labor market discrimination as "the problem of an earlier era."

Does employer discrimination continue to affect labor market outcomes for minority work

ers? Clear answers are elusive because dis

crimination is hard to measure. Without

observing actual hiring decisions, it is difficult

to assess exactly how and under what conditions

race shapes employer behavior. We address this issue with a field experiment that allows direct observation of employer decision making. By presenting equally qualified applicants who dif fer only by race or ethnicity, we can observe the

degree to which racial considerations affect real

hiring decisions. Furthermore, we move beyond experimental estimates of discrimination to

explore the processes by which discrimination occurs. Examining the interactions between job seekers and employers, we gain new insights into how race influences employers' percep tions of job candidate quality and desirability. Studying the multifaceted character of dis crimination highlights the range of decisions that

collectively reduce opportunities for minority candidates.

CONCEPTUALIZING DISCRIMINATION

Empirical studies often portray discrimination as a single decision. Research on employment

disparities, for example, considers the role of discrimination at the point of initial hire; research on pay disparities considers discrimi nation at the point of wage-setting decisions. In

reality, discrimination may occur at multiple decision points across the employment rela

tionship. In this way, even relatively small

episodes of discrimination?when experienced at multiple intervals or across multiple con

texts?can have substantial effects on aggregate outcomes.

Depictions of discriminators also often por tray the labor market as divided neatly between

employers with a "taste for discrimination" and those who are indifferent to race (Becker 1957). Consequently, it is suggested, job seekers can avoid discrimination by sorting themselves into sectors of the labor market where discrimination is less likely to occur (Heckman 1998:103). Fryer and Levitt (2003:5) characterize employ ers according to a similar dichotomy, with appli cants best advised to identify and avoid

employers prone to discrimination, rather than

wasting time pursuing job opportunities among firms unwilling to hire them: "In the face of dis

criminatory employers, it is actually in the inter est of both employee and employers for Blacks to signal race, either via a name or other r?sum?

information, rather than undertaking a costly

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DISCRIMINATION IN A LOW-WAGE LABOR MARKET 779

interview with little hope of receiving a job offer." According to this conceptualization of labor market discrimination, racial preferences or biases are fixed and concentrated among a

specific subset of employers. Other evidence challenges this tidy distinc

tion between employers who do and do not dis criminate. Alternative formulations of labor

market discrimination encourage us to view the

process as more interactive, contextual, and

widespread. Theories of both statistical dis crimination and stereotypes view race as a

heuristic employers use to evaluate job appli cants about whom little is known. Here, group based generalizations provide guidance about the expected profile of individuals from a given group and facilitate decision making when infor mation or time are scarce (Aigner and Cain

1977; Fiske 1998). Heuristics of this kind are

pervasive (and often unconscious). Their effects

may vary depending on the availability of and attention to person-specific information (such as that conveyed through application materials or in an interview) that may interact with and

potentially override initial expectations. A long line of social psychological research

investigates how stereotypes give way to indi

vidualizing information, as well as the condi tions under which stereotypes demonstrate a stubborn resistance to change (Bodenhausen 1988; Fiske 1998; Trope and Thomson 1997).1 This research suggests that salient personaliz ing information can quickly counteract stereo

typed expectations; however, in evaluating difficult-to-observe or ambiguously relevant

characteristics, or when decision makers have

competing demands on their attention, stereo

types often filter information in ways that pre serve expectations (Darley and Gross 1983; Dovidio and Gaertner 2000; Gilbert and Hixon

1991). In these cases of decision making under

uncertainty, racial preferences or biases are

unlikely to be expressed in any static or uniform

way, but will vary in intensity and consequence depending on other characteristics of the appli cant, the employer, and the interaction between the two.

1 Theories of statistical discrimination also predict

employer responsiveness to individual characteristics

(e.g., Altonji and Pierret 2001; Oettinger 1996; cf.

Pager and Karafin 2009).

In addition to noting the varying role of race across employment interactions, some research

shifts the focus from employer characteristics to the characteristics of the job for which a given

worker is being considered. Previous research

points to the negative consequences of the

changing composition of low-wage jobs for black men, with the shift from manufacturing to services skewing the distribution of skill demands toward "soft skills," for which black men are considered lacking (Moss and Tilly 2001). Jobs involving customer service or con

tact with clients heighten the salience of race because of employers' concerns about the dress

and demeanor of young black men (Moss and

Tilly 2001). Jobs at the "back of the house" or those emphasizing manual skills are less like

ly to activate concerns of this kind. In this sce

nario, discrimination may obtain not at the

employer level but at the job level, with black

applicants excluded from some job types and channeled into others. In this case, we would

look to variation in discrimination not among employers but among the job openings for which workers are being considered.

Rather than viewing discrimination as a sin

gle decision, or as the result of a small group of

highly prejudiced employers, a growing body of research points to the variable contexts that

shape how information about applicants may be filtered and interpreted along racial lines. Decision making under uncertainty and the

race-typing of jobs both make discrimination more likely. To capture the contingent and cumu

lative effects of discrimination implied by these theories requires an examination of how expe riences of discrimination may be distributed across a wide range of decision points and may

vary depending on interactions among the

employer, the applicant, and the job in question.

THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF LOW-WAGE LABOR MARKETS

Economic theory predicts the decline of dis crimination through market competition (Becker 1957), but several features of contemporary low-wage labor markets may sustain or renew

racialized decision making. Shifts in the com

position of both low-wage jobs and workers have potentially created new incentives and

opportunities for employers to enact racial pref erences in hiring. First, low-wage job growth is

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780 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

concentrated in service industries, in positions that place a heavy emphasis on self-presentation, interaction with customers, and other person

ality-related attributes (Moss and Tilly 2001). As discussed earlier, employers consistently express concerns over the "soft skills" of black men,

implying a potential skills mismatch between the skill requirements of new job growth and the

perceived skill profile of black male job seek ers. Furthermore, because many of the qualities valued by employers for contemporary low

wage jobs are difficult to evaluate from a writ ten application or brief meeting, generalized negative perceptions of minority workers may be more difficult for individual minority appli cants to disconfirm (Biernat and Kobrynowicz 1997).

Second, low-wage labor markets today are

characterized by increasing heterogeneity of the urban minority work force, with low-skill black workers now more likely to compete with other minority groups?in particular, low-skill Latino workers. Interviews with employers in Los Angeles and Chicago suggest consistent

preferences for Latinos over blacks, with Latino workers viewed as more pliant, reliable, and

hard-working (Kirschenman and Neckerman 1991 ; Waldinger and Lichter 2003). Given these racial preferences among employers, growing

competition within the low-wage labor market

may leave black men vulnerable to discrimina tion relative not only to whites, but to Latinos as well.

Finally, low-wage labor markets are increas

ingly supplied by workers with criminal records.

Nearly a third of black men without a college degree have prison records by their mid-30s, adding to employers' reservations about black male job applicants (Pager 2007b; Pettit and Western 2004). The high rate of incarceration makes a criminal record a newly important source of stigma that is worth studying in its own

right. Moreover, we can view a criminal record

as an extreme and authoritative signal of the kinds of problematic behaviors that employers ascribe to young black men. In this context, separating the effects of criminal stigma from race provides a useful benchmark for measur

ing racial stigma. In the first effort in this direc

tion, Pager's (2003) research in a Milwaukee field experiment compared racial and criminal

stigma among matched pairs of job seekers.

Fielding a pair of black and a pair of white job

applicants (in which one member of each pair was randomly assigned a criminal record), Pager found that a black applicant with no criminal

background experiences job prospects similar to those of a white felon. That blackness con fers the same disadvantage as a felony convic

tion helps calibrate the deeply skeptical view of

young black men in the eyes of Milwaukee

employers. The growing importance of soft skills, ethnic

heterogeneity, and job seekers with criminal records suggest the persistence or increasing incidence of discrimination in contemporary low-wage labor markets. Whether based on sta

tistical generalizations or inaccurate stereo

types, preconceived notions about the characteristics or desirability of black men rel ative to other applicant types are likely to struc ture the distribution of opportunity along racial lines.

METHODS FOR STUDYING LABOR MARKET DISCRIMINATION

Racial discrimination in the labor market is typ ically studied by comparing the wages of whites and minorities, statistically controlling for human capital characteristics. Estimates from a

variety of social surveys suggest that the black white difference in hourly wages among men

usually range between about 10 and 20 percent (Cancio, Evans, and Maume 1996; Darity and

Meyers 1998; Neal and Johnson 1996). Although widely used, this residual method, in which discrimination is defined as the unex

plained race difference in wages, is sensitive to the measurement of human capital. Where race

differences in human capital are incompletely observed, the effect of discrimination may be overestimated (Farkas and Vicknair 1996; Neal and Johnson 1996).

Residual estimates of discrimination infer

employer behavior from data on workers' wages.

Field experiments, by contrast, offer a more

direct approach to the measurement of dis crimination. This approach, also referred to as

an audit methodology, involves the use of matched teams of job applicants?called testers?who apply to real job openings and record responses from employers. Testers are

assigned equivalent r?sum?s and are matched on a variety of characteristics like age, education, physical appearance, and interpersonal skills.

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DISCRIMINATION IN A LOW-WAGE LABOR MARKET 781

Because black and white testers are sent to the same firms, and testers are matched on a wide

variety of characteristics, much of the unex

plained variation that confounds residual esti mates of discrimination is experimentally controlled.

In part due to taxing logistical requirements, the use of in-person audit studies of employment remains rare, with only a handful of such stud ies conducted over the past 20 years (Bendick, Jackson, and Reinoso 1994; Bendick et al. 1991 ; Cross et al. 1990; Pager 2003; Turner, Fix, and

Struyk 1991).2 Moreover, the typical emphasis on a single comparison group leaves several

significant features of contemporary urban labor markets unexplored.

By studying both race and criminal back

ground, the Milwaukee audit study represents an

important starting point for this project (Pager 2003). The Milwaukee study examined the influ ence of the criminal justice system on labor market stratification by studying the effect of a criminal record for black and white job seekers.

Although race emerged as a key theme in the

study's findings, the topic of racial discrimina tion was not a central focus. Moreover, the

research design yielded only indirect evidence of racial discrimination because black and white testers did not apply to the same employers. Our ability to investigate when and how racial discrimination occurs is therefore limited in this context.

The current study updates and extends ear

lier research in several ways. First, we focus

directly on the question of racial discrimination, in both conceptualization and design. This

emphasis allows us to situate our research with

in ongoing debates about discrimination and to

provide a rigorous design for detecting racial discrimination. Second, we move beyond stan

dard two-race models of discrimination by including matched black, white, and Latino job seekers, reflecting the racial heterogeneity of

2 For a summary of the results of earlier audit

studies of employment, see Heckman and Siegelman

(1993) and Pager (2007a). Correspondence studies, which rely on r?sum?s sent by mail rather than in-per son applications (e.g., Bertrand and Mullainathan

2004), are less costly but rely on application proce dures less suited for low-wage labor markets (which

typically require in-person applications).

large urban labor markets. To our knowledge, this is the first study of its kind to simultane

ously examine the employment experiences of three racial/ethnic groups. Third, to help cali brate the magnitude of racial preferences, we

compare applicants affected by varying forms of stigma; specifically, we compare minority applicants with white applicants just released from prison. Where the Milwaukee study attempted this comparison across teams, the

present analysis provides a direct test by com

paring the outcomes of minority and ex-offend er applicants who visit the same employers.

Finally, we extend our analysis from the quan

titative evidence of differential treatment to a rich set of qualitative data that allow for an

exploration of the process of discrimination.

Drawing from the testers' extensive field notes that describe their interactions with employers,

we provide a unique window into the range of

employer responses that characterize discrimi nation in contemporary low-wage labor markets.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS

The New York City Hiring Discrimination Study sent matched teams of testers to apply for 340 real entry-level jobs throughout New York City over nine months in 2004. The testers were

well-spoken, clean-cut young men, ages 22 to

26. Most were college-educated, between 5 feet 10 inches and 6 feet in height, and recruited in and around New York City. They were matched on the basis of their verbal skills, interactional

styles (level of eye contact, demeanor, and ver

bosity), and physical attractiveness. Testers were

assigned fictitious r?sum?s indicating identi cal educational attainment and comparable qual ities of high school, work experience (quantity and kind), and neighborhood of residence. R?sum?s were prepared in different fonts and formats and randomly varied across testers,

with each r?sum? used by testers from each race group. Testers presented themselves as

high school graduates with steady work expe rience in entry-level jobs. Finally, the testers

passed a common training program to ensure

uniform behavior in job interviews. While in the

field, the testers dressed similarly and commu nicated with teammates by cell phone to antic

ipate unusual interview situations.

We fielded two teams that each included a

white, Latino, and black tester. To help ensure

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782 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

comparability, the Latino testers spoke in unac cented English, were U.S. citizens of Puerto Rican descent, and, like the other testers, claimed no Spanish language ability. The first team tests a standard racial hierarchy, with the

white tester serving as a benchmark against which to measure variation in racial and ethnic discrimination. To calibrate the magnitude of racial stigma, the second team compares black and Latino testers with a white tester with a criminal record. The criminal record was typi cally disclosed in answer to the standard ques tion on employment applications, "Have you ever been convicted of a crime? If yes, please explain." We instructed testers to reveal, when

asked, that they had recently been released from

prison after serving 18 months for a drug felony (possession with intent to distribute, cocaine). In addition, following Pager (2003), the white tester's criminal record was also signaled on

the r?sum? by listing work experience at a state

prison and by listing a parole officer as a ref erence.3

For both teams, we sampled employers from

job listings for entry-level positions, defined as jobs requiring little previous experience and no more than a high school degree. Job titles included restaurant jobs, retail sales, warehouse

workers, couriers, telemarketers, customer ser

vice positions, clerical workers, stockers,

movers, delivery drivers, and a wide range of

other low-wage positions. Each week, we ran

domly drew job listings from the classified sec tions of the New York Times, Daily News, New York Post, Village Voice, and the online service

Craigslist. The broad range of job listings allowed for extensive coverage of the entry level labor market in New York. From the avail able population of job listings, we took a simple random sample of advertisements each week.

Testers in each team applied to each job with in a 24-hour period, randomly varying the order

of the applicants. Our dependent variable records any positive

response in which a tester was either offered a

job or called back for a second interview. We recorded callbacks using voicemail boxes set up

3 Results from Pager (2003) suggest that provid

ing information about a criminal record to employ ers who do not request the information does little to

affect hiring decisions.

for each tester. For employer i (i =

1,... ,N) and

tester t(t =

W,B,oxL for white, black, or Latino), a positive response, yit, is a binary variable that

scores 1 for a job offer or callback, and 0 oth erwise. We define the level of differential treat ment as the ratio in positive response rates for each comparison, rWB =yw i'yB, whereytis the

proportion of positive responses for testers of race t. Under the null hypothesis of equal treat

ment, rWB -

1, the proportion of positive

responses received by each racial group is equal. For data on matched pairs, several statistical tests have been proposed that use within-pair comparisons to account for the correlation of

observations from the same pair (e.g., Agresti

1990; Heckman and Siegelman 1993). In our

case, where three testers are sent to the same

employer, we have a matched triplet and infor mation from all three testers should ideally con tribute to an inference about a contrast between

any two. Ghosh and colleagues (2000) suggest that matched pairs can be fit with a hierarchi cal logistic regression with a random effect for each pair. We generalize their approach to our matched triplets, fitting a random effect for each employer. If the probability of a positive response is given by E(yit)

= pit, the hierarchi

cal model is written

log(r^-) = az + ?^Y + yLzY,

where Bit is a dummy variable for blacks, Lit is a dummy variable for Latinos, and the random effects for employers, ai? is given a normal dis

tribution. The employer effects, ai? induce a

correlation among observations from the same

employers and reduce standard errors, as in the

usual matched-pair inference. We estimate the

models with Markov Chain Monte Carlo meth ods. We construct intervals for the ratios (rWB,

rWL, and rBL) by taking random draws from the

posterior predictive distribution of yit. Alternative methods that adjust for clustering by employer yield similar results to those report ed below.

The Problems of Matching

The quality of audit results depends on the com

parability of the testers. Because race cannot be

experimentally assigned, researchers must rely on effective selection and matching to construct audit teams in which all relevant characteristics

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DISCRIMINATION IN A LOW-WAGE LABOR MARKET 783

of testers are similar?something that may leave

substantial room for bias. Heckman and

Siegelman (1993) argue that researchers know little about the hard-to-observe characteristics

highly prized by employers. If testers are poor ly matched, evidence of discrimination may be

merely an artifact of idiosyncratic tester char

acteristics.

Bertrand and Mullainathan (2004) remove tester effects in a "correspondence test" that

sent r?sum?s with common white and black names to employers in Boston and Chicago. Their design allows the random assignment of r?sum? characteristics to white- and black

sounding names, largely removing concerns

about unobserved characteristics. R?sum?s with white names were 50 percent more likely than those with black names to receive callbacks from employers (9.7 versus 6.5 percent). Studies of this kind provide some reassurance that results from the body of audit research are not driven by tester effects alone.

Because we rely on in-person audits for our

study of low-wage labor markets, the effective

matching of testers is a key concern.4 We reviewed more than 300 applicants to identify our final team of 10 testers.5 Successful appli cants were subject to two lengthy screening interviews and a written test, a far more prob

ing job selection process than the testers encoun tered in their fieldwork.6 Each tester passed a

4 In-person audits also allow for the inclusion of

a wide range of entry-level job types (which often

require in-person applications); they provide a clear

method for signaling race, without concerns over

the class-connotations of racially distinctive names

(Fryer and Levitt 2004); and they allow us to gather both quantitative and qualitative data, with informa

tion on whether an applicant receives the job as well

as how he is treated during the interview process. 5 These 300 applicants were prescreened for appro

priate age, race, ethnicity, and gender. 6

Indeed, as an employer herself, the researcher

must identify subtle cues about applicants that indi

cate their ability to perform. Whether or not these cues

are explicit, conscious, or measurable, they are pres ent in a researcher's evaluation of tester candidates,

just as they are in employers' evaluations of entry level job applicants. Like employers, researchers are

affected by both objective and subjective/subcon scious indicators of applicant quality in their selec

tion and matching of testers in ways that should

Standard training period, was required to dress

uniformly, and was subject to periodic spot checks for quality control.7

Despite these measures, uncontrolled tester

effects remain a threat to inferences about dis

crimination. We assess the sensitivity of our results to testers in four ways. First, each tester

may have a unique effect, but the average effect

of the testers may be zero. In this case, the

observations from each tester will be correlat

ed and standard errors that ignore this cluster

ing will tend to be too small. We allow for this

possibility by fitting an additional random effect for each tester in our hierarchical logistic regres sion.8 Second, each tester may have a unique

effect, but these effects may not average to zero.

To assess the sensitivity of our results to each

tester, we perform a type of cross-validation in

which the treatment effect is recalculated for a reduced data set, sequentially omitting those

employers associated with each individual tester. Confidence intervals below are based on mod els that include employer and tester random effects. We compare these results with cross-val

idation treatment effects based on subsets of the data in which individual testers are sequen tially omitted. Third, we recalculate our key results for each unique combination of testers matched in teams over the course of the field work (see Appendix, Table A2). These results, although sensitive to small sample sizes for some combinations, tend to support the con

sistency of effects across a number of tester

comparisons. As a final investigation of tester effects, we

consider the possibility that the expectations or behaviors of testers may influence the audit results in nonrandom ways. For example, if a

black tester expects to be treated poorly by

ultimately improve the nuanced calibration of test

partners. 7 In addition to on-site supervision at the start and

finish of each day of fieldwork, on several occa

sions, we "tested the testers." For example, we hid

video cameras in the offices of confederate employ ers, which allowed us to monitor testers' compliance with the audit protocol as well as to use the tapes as

a training tool to better synchronize test partners' per formance (not counted among results).

8 Additional models (not shown here) test for fixed effects of individual testers; we find no significant differences across testers within each race group.

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784 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

employers, he may appear more withdrawn,

nervous, or defensive in interactions. The nature

of the interaction may create a self-fulfilling prophecy, in which the tester experiences poor outcomes for reasons unrelated to his race

(Steele and Aronsen 1995). We assess these tester effects by analyzing the degree to which

personal contact between testers and employers is associated with widening racial disparities.

Overall, we find no evidence that testers' inter

personal styles or expectations are associated

with increasing discrimination; if anything, per sonal contact appears to weaken the effect of

race, suggesting that testers' performance min

imized, rather than exaggerated, our measures

of racial bias (see Appendix, Table Al). The problem of imperfect matching among

testers is a well-understood vulnerability of audit experiments, and one to which we devot ed considerable attention. Ironically, however, achieving perfect matches can itself produce distortions in the hiring process. Because audit

partners are matched on all characteristics that are most directly relevant to hiring decisions

(e.g., education, work experience, and physical

attributes), employers may be forced to privilege relatively minor characteristics simply out of

necessity to break a tie (Heckman 1998:111). If

employers care only marginally about race, but are confronted with applicants equal on all other

dimensions, this single characteristic may take on greater significance than it would under nor

mal circumstances when evaluating real appli cants who differ according to multiple dimensions.

The design of our study, which focuses on the

early stages of the hiring process, avoids situa tions in which employers must choose only a

single applicant. By using "callbacks" as one of our key dependent variables, we include cases that represent an employer's first pass at appli cant screening.9 Indeed, recent surveys suggest that employers interview an average of six to

9 Positive responses recorded in this study were

fairly evenly split between callbacks and job offers.

Employers who made offers on-the-spot were typi

cally hiring more than one applicant, thus similarly

avoiding a situation in which a forced-choice becomes

necessary. In fact, rates of job offers were more even

ly distributed by race relative to callbacks (see Tables

Al andA2).

eight applicants for each entry-level job open ing (Pager 2007b). If race represents only a

minor concern for employers, we would expect all members of our audit team to make it through the first cut. If race figures prominently in the first round of review, we can infer that this char acteristic has been invoked as more than a mere tie-breaker. In these cases, the evidence of race

based decision making is quite strong.

EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

The primary results from the field experiment focus on the proportion of applications sub mitted by testers that elicited either a callback or a job offer from employers, by race of the

applicant. Our first team assesses the effects of race discrimination by comparing the outcomes of equally qualified white, Latino, and black

applicants. Figure la reports positive response rates for each racial/ethnic group. In applications to 171 employers, the white tester received a callback or job offer 31.0 percent of the time, compared with a positive response rate of 25.2

percent for Latinos and 15.2 percent for blacks. These results show a clear racial hierarchy, with whites in the lead, followed by Latinos, and blacks trailing behind.

Figure lb shows the contrasts between the three race groups. Once we adjust for employ er and tester effects, the confidence interval for the white-Latino ratio of 1.23 includes one.10 By contrast, the white-black ratio of 2.04 is sub

stantively large and statistically significant. The

positive response rate for blacks is also signif icantly lower than the rate for Latinos. The

points in the figure show the cross-validation results obtained by sequentially dropping cases associated with each individual tester. All ratios remain consistently greater than one, indicating that employers treat blacks less positively

10 In a model pooling cases from the two teams, with main effects for team and criminal background, the white-Latino gap becomes statistically significant. The generality of this result certainly deserves more

study. The Puerto Ricans of New York that our Latino

testers represent are a longstanding community of

U.S. citizens. In other local labor markets, where

markers of citizenship and accent are more prominent sources of difference, evidence of ethnic discrimi

nation may be stronger.

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DISCRIMINATION IN A LOW-WAGE LABOR MARKET 785

la. Positive Responses

by Race and Ethnicity

lb. Ratios of Positive Responses by Race and Ethnicity

-*

i

3.00

2.50

2.00

1.50

1.00

0.50 White Latino Black White /Latino White/Black Latino/Black

Figure 1. Positive Response Rates and Paired Comparisons by Race and Ethnicity

Notes: Positive responses refer to callbacks or job offers. Hollow circles in Figure lb indicate point estimates of the

ratio. Solid circles indicate ratios obtained by sequentially dropping testers from the analysis. We estimated 95 per cent confidence intervals from a hierarchical logistic regression with employer and tester random effects. Number

of employers =171.

regardless of which testers are applying for

jobs. Overall, these results indicate that, rela tive to equally qualified blacks, employers sig nificantly prefer white and Latino job applicants. The findings suggest that a black

applicant has to search twice as long as an

equally qualified white applicant before receiv

ing a callback or job offer from an employer. The results from this first comparison indi

cate employers' strong racial preferences, but the magnitude of this preference remains some

what abstract. To calibrate the effects of race

against another stigmatized category, the ex

offender, we repeated the experiment, this time

assigning a criminal record to the white tester.

Figure 2a shows the percentage of positive responses?job offers or callbacks?received

by each tester. In this experiment, whites with criminal records obtained positive responses in 17.2 percent of 169 job applications, com

pared with 15.4 percent for Latinos and 13.0

percent for blacks.11 The white testers' racial

advantage narrows substantially in this com

11 The overall rate of positive responses is lower

for all testers relative to the results presented in

Figure 1. This is likely due to the staggered fielding of teams and resulting differences in the composition of employers audited across the two time periods.

parison; yet the white applicant with a crimi nal record still does just as well, if not better, than his minority counterparts with no crimi nal background.

Figure 2b shows that the white-Latino ratio is close to one and the confidence interval

overlaps one by a large margin. The white black ratio is now a statistically insignificant 1.32, compared with a significant ratio of 2.04

when the white tester had a clean record. As in the previous experiment, Latinos were pre

ferred to blacks, but here the difference is not

significant. As before, the cross-validation treatment effects, obtained by dropping employers associated with one particular tester, are all close to one. These results indicate that,

regardless of which testers were sent into the

field, employers differentiated little among the three applicant groups.

The comparison of a white felon with black and Latino applicants with clean backgrounds provides a vivid calibration of the effects of race on hiring decisions. While ex-offenders are disadvantaged in the labor market relative to applicants with no criminal background, the

stigma of a felony conviction appears to be no

greater than that of minority status. Replicating earlier results from Milwaukee (Pager 2003), these findings suggest that New York employ

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786 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

35

30

# 25

20

2a. Positive Responses by Race, Ethnicity, and Criminal Record

2b. Ratios of Positive Responses by Race, Ethnicity, and Criminal Record

17.2 15.4

I I White felon Latino

(clean record)

Black

(clean record)

White felon / White felon / Latino / Latino Black Black

3.00

2.50

2.00

I ?* 1.50

1.00

0.50

Figure 2. Positive Response Rates and Paired Comparisons by Race, Ethnicity, and Criminal

Background

Notes: Positive responses refer to callbacks or job offers. Hollow circles in Figure 2b indicate point estimates of the

ratio. Solid circles indicate ratios obtained by sequentially dropping testers from the analysis. We estimated 95 per cent confidence intervals from a hierarchical logistic regression with employer and tester random effects. Number

of employers = 169.

ers view minority applicants as essentially

equivalent to whites just out of prison. Theories of statistical discrimination point

to the very high incarceration rates among

young black men as a key explanation for

employers' indifference between white felons

and blacks with potentially unobserved crimi

nal histories. Current estimates suggest that

roughly 18 percent of young black men with

high school degrees will experience incarcera

tion by their early 30s (Pettit and Western 2004), and a larger fraction surely have lower level

convictions and arrests. Still, the fact that known

information about a white applicant's serious

criminal conviction is viewed with no more

concern than the assumed characteristics of a

young black man points to the strength and

intensity of contemporary racial attitudes.

Overcoming these negative expectations, even

for a candidate with otherwise appealing char

acteristics, requires the negotiation of a number

of significant hurdles not present for white job seekers.

Race at Work: An Examination of Interactions retween Applicants and Employers

The strong evidence of hiring discrimination from the field experiment provides a clear measure of the continuing significance of race in employer decision making. These numbers, however, tell us little about the process by which race comes to matter. Fortunately, the in-person

design of the experiment allows us to further

supplement the experimental findings with qual itative evidence from testers' field notes that

report their interactions in job interviews. These detailed narratives describe employers' delib erations and suggest some of the ways race

comes into play during employment interac tions.

Our analysis examines cases in which testers had sufficient interaction with employers for content coding. Consistent with the notion that

contemporary forms of discrimination are large ly subtle and covert, many cases contain little that would lead us to anticipate the differential treatment that followed. Of those that do, how ever, we observe several consistent patterns in

employers' responses. In particular, three cate

gories of behavior stand out, which we refer to

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DISCRIMINATION IN A LOW-WAGE LABOR MARKET 787

here as: categorical exclusion, shifting stan

dards, and race-coded job channeling. The first

type of behavior, categorical exclusion, is char

acterized by an immediate or automatic rejec

tion of the black (or minority) candidate in favor

of a white applicant. Occurring early in the

application process, these decisions involve lit

tle negotiated interaction but appear to reflect a fairly rigid application of employers' racial

preferences or beliefs. A second category of

behavior, shifting standards, reflects a more

dynamic process of decision making. Here we

observe cases in which employers' evaluations

of applicants appear actively shaped or con

structed through a racial lens, with similar qual ifications or deficits taking on varying relevance

depending on an applicant's race. Finally, a third

category of behavior moves beyond the hiring decision to a focus on job placement. Race

based job channeling represents a process by which minority applicants are steered toward

particular job types, often those characterized

by greater physical demands and reduced cus

tomer contact.

By observing the interactions that character

ize each of these behavior types, we gain a rare

glimpse into the processes by which discrimi

nation takes place. At the same time, we empha

size that this discussion is intended as a

descriptive exercise rather than a formal causal

analysis. Indeed, the categories we identify are

not mutually exclusive; some of the same

processes may be operating simultaneously,

with employers' shifting evaluations of applicant skills leading to different patterns of job chan

neling, or assumptions about the appropriate

race of the incumbent of a particular position

leading to forms of categorical exclusion.

Likewise, this typology cannot account for all

of the differential treatment we observe?at

least half of the employer decisions were made on the basis of little or no personal contact

between applicant and employer, leaving the

nature of the decision entirely unobserved. With

these caveats in mind, we nevertheless view the

analysis as providing a unique contribution to

the study of racial discrimination, revealing mechanisms at work that observational research

can rarely identify.

Categorical Exclusion

Few interactions between our testers and

employers revealed signs of racial animus or

hostility toward minority applicants. At the same

time, a close comparison of test partners' expe

riences shows a number of cases in which race

appears to be the sole or primary criterion for an employer's decision. With little negotiation or deliberation over the selection decision, these

employers' decisions seem to reflect a preex

isting judgment regarding the adequacy or desir

ability of a minority candidate. The

uncompromising nature of the employer's deci

sion can be characterized as a form of categor ical exclusion.

A clear-cut case of categorical exclusion was

provided when all three testers applied for a

warehouse worker position and received a per

functory decision. Zuri, one of our black testers,

reported: "The original woman who had herd ed us in told us that when we finished filling out the application we could leave because 'there's no interview today, guys!' ... When I made it across the street to the bus stop

... the woman

who had collected our completed applications pointed in the direction of Simon, Josue, and

myself [the three test partners] motioning for us to return. All three of us went over.... She

looked at me and told me she 'needed to speak to these two' and that I could go back." Zuri returned to the bus stop, while his white and Latino test partners were both asked to come back at 5 p.m. that day to start work. Simon, the white tester, reported, "She said she told the other people that we needed to sign something? that that's why she called us over?so as not to

let them know she was hiring us. She seemed

pretty concerned with not letting anyone else know."

In this context, with no interview and virtu

ally no direct contact with the employer, we observe a decision that appears to be based on little other than race. The job is a manual posi tion for which Zuri is at least as able, yet he is

readily passed over in favor of his white and Latino counterparts.

This case is unusual in that three testers were

rarely present at a given location at the same

time. More often, we found evidence of differ ential treatment only after comparing the testers'

reports side by side. Here again, we observed

several hiring decisions in which race appeared to be the sole or primary source of differentia

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788 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

tion. In one example, the three testers inquired about a sales position at

a retail clothing store.

Joe, one of our black testers, reported that, "[the employer] said the position was just filled and that she would be calling people in for an inter view if the person doesn't work out." Josue, his Latino test partner, was told something very similar: "She informed me that the position was

already filled, but did not know if the hired

employee would work out. She told me to leave

my r?sum? with her." By contrast, Simon, their white test partner, who applied last, had a

notably different experience: "I asked what the

hiring process was?if they're taking applica tions now, interviewing, etc. She looked at my application. 'You can start immediately?'Yes. 'Can you start tomorrow?'Yes. '10 a.m.' She was

very friendly and introduced me to another woman (white, 28) at the cash register who will be training me."

A similar case arose a few weeks later at an

electronics store. Joe, the black tester, was

allowed to complete an application but was told that his references would have to be checked before he could be interviewed. Meanwhile, Simon and Josue, his white and Latino partners, applied shortly afterward and were interviewed on the spot. Joe's references were never called,

while Simon received a callback two days later

offering him the job. When evaluated individually, these interac

tions do not indicate racial prejudice or dis crimination. Side by side, however, we see that

minority applicants encounter barriers not pres ent for the white applicant, with employers cit

ing excuses for putting off the black or minority candidate (e.g., "the job has already been filled" or "we'd have to check your references before

we can proceed") that appear not to apply for the white applicant. To be sure, certain cases may

capture random error?perhaps a position became available between the testers' visits, or

an employer was otherwise preoccupied when

one applicant arrived but not another, leading to the employer's differential response. Still, the

consistency of the pattern in these data sug gests that random error is unlikely to be a dom inant factor. Indeed, of the 171 tests conducted

by the first team (no criminal background), white testers were singled out for callbacks or

job offers 15 times, whereas there was only a

single case in which a black tester received a

positive response when his white or Latino part ner did not.12

These cases of categorical exclusion,

although directly observed in only a small num ber of audits (5 of the 47 cases of differential treatment across the two teams), reveal one

form of discrimination in which racial consid erations appear relatively fixed and unyield ing.13 Before black (or minority) candidates have the chance to demonstrate their qualifica tions, they are weeded out on the basis of a sin

gle categorical distinction.

Categorical exclusion represents one impor tant form of discrimination. While these rather

abrupt interactions reveal little about the under

lying motivation that drives employers' deci

sions, they do demonstrate the sometimes rigid barriers facing minority job seekers. In these cases, black (or minority) applicants are dis

couraged or dismissed at the outset of the

employment process, leaving little opportunity for a more nuanced review.

Shifting Standards

Making it past the initial point of contact was not the only hurdle facing minority applicants. Indeed, among those who recorded more exten

sive interaction with employers, we observe a

complex set of racial dynamics at work. On the one hand, personal contact with employers was associated with significantly improved out comes for all testers and a narrowing of the racial gap (see Appendix, Table A1). The testers'

interpersonal skills seemed to reduce the influ

12 In an additional 13 cases, both white and Latino

testers received positive responses; in seven cases, the

Latino tester alone was selected (see Appendix, Table A2).

13 The denominator of 47 represents the total num

ber of cases of black-white differential treatment

from the first (N =

28) and second (N =

19) teams. In calculating the numerator, we do not include a

number of additional cases of differential treatment

resulting from applications in which there was little

or no personal contact between testers and the

employer (rates of personal contact were similar by race of tester). In such cases, differential treatment

may reflect categorical exclusion (based on a visual

assessment of the candidate), shifting standards

(based on a review of the completed applications), random error, or something else.

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DISCRIMINATION IN A LOW-WAGE LABOR MARKET 789

ence of racial bias, or at least did not exacerbate it. Yet, even in the context of this more person

alized review, we see evidence of subtle bias in the evaluation of applicant qualifications. In

particular, a number of cases reveal how testers'

"objective" qualifications appear to be reinter

preted through the lens of race. Although testers' r?sum?s were matched on education and work

experience, some employers seemed to weigh

qualifications differently depending on the

applicant's race. In the following interactions, we see evidence that the same deficiencies of skill or experience appear to be more disquali fying for the minority job seekers (N

= 11).

In one case, Joe, a black tester, was not

allowed to apply for a sales position due to his lack of direct experience. He reported, "[The employer] handed me back my r?sum? and told me they didn't have any positions to offer me

... that I needed a couple years of experience." The employer voiced similar concerns with Josue and Kevin, Joe's Latino and white part ners. Josue wrote, "After a few minutes of wait

ing ... I met with [the employer] who looked over my r?sum?. He said that he was a little wor ried that I would not be able to do the work."

Kevin reported an even stronger reaction: "[The

employer] looked at my r?sum? and said, 'There is absolutely nothing here that qualifies you for this position.'" Yet, despite their evident lack of

qualifications, Kevin and Josue were offered the sales job and asked to come back the next morn

ing. In interactions with all three testers, the

employer clearly expressed his concern over

the applicants' lack of relevant work experi ence. This lack of experience was not grounds for disqualification for the white and Latino

candidates, whereas the black applicant was

readily dismissed. When applying for a job as a line cook at a

midlevel Manhattan restaurant, the three testers encountered similar concerns about their lack of relevant experience. Josue, the Latino tester,

reported, "[The employer] then asked me if I had

any prior kitchen or cooking experience. I told him that I did not really have any, but that I worked alongside cooks at [my prior job as a

server]. He then asked me if I had any 'knife'

experience and I told him no_He told me he would give me a try and wanted to know if I was available this coming Sunday at 2 p.m." Simon, his white test partner, was also invited to come back for a trial period. By contrast, Joe, the

black tester, found that "they are only looking for experienced line cooks." Joe wrote, "I start

ed to try and convince him to give me a chance but he cut me off and said I didn't qualify." None of the testers had direct experience with kitchen work, but the white and Latino appli cants were viewed as viable prospects while the black applicant was rejected because he lacked experience.

In other cases, employers perceived real skill or experience differences among applicants despite the fact that the testers' r?sum?s were

designed to convey identical qualifications. In one example, the testers applied for a job at a

moving company. Joe, the black applicant, spoke with the employer about his prior experience as a stockperson at a moving truck company, but

"[the employer] told me that he couldn't use me because he is looking for someone with mov

ing experience." Josue, his Latino partner, pre sented his experience as a stocker at a delivery company and reported a similar reaction, "He

then told me that since I have no experience ...

there is nothing he could do for me." Simon, their white test partner, presented identical qual ifications, but the employer responded more

favorably: '"To be honest, we're looking for someone with specific moving experience. But because you've worked for [a storage company], that has a little to do with moving.' He wanted

me to come in tomorrow between 10 and 11." The employer is consistent in his preference for workers with relevant prior experience, but he is willing to apply a more flexible, inclusive standard in evaluating the experience of the

white candidate than in the case of the minori

ty applicants. Employers' shifting standards, offering more latitude to marginally skilled white applicants than to similarly qualified minorities, suggest that even the evaluation of

"objective" information can be affected by underlying racial considerations.

Even in cases where the white tester pre sented as a felon, we see some evidence that this

applicant was afforded the benefit of the doubt in ways that his minority counterparts were not. In applying at an auto dealership, for example, the three testers met with very different reac tions. Joe, the black tester, was informed at the outset that the only available positions were for

people with direct auto sales experience. When

Josue, his Latino partner, applied, the lack of direct auto sales experience was less of a prob

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790 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

lern. Josue reported, "He asked me if I had any customer service experience and I said not real

ly.... He then told me that he wanted to get rid of a few bad apples who were not performing well. He asked me when I could start." Josue was

told to wait for a callback on Monday. When the

employer interviewed Keith, their white ex felon test partner, he gave him a stern lecture

regarding his criminal background. The employ er warned, "I have no problem with your con

viction, it doesn't bother me. But if I find out

money is missing or you're not clean or not

showing up on time I have no problem ending the relationship." Despite the employer's con

cerns, Keith was offered the job on the spot. The benefit of the doubt conferred by whiteness

persists here, even in the context of a white

applicant just released from prison. A pattern in these interactions, when com

pared side by side, is the use of double stan

dards?seeking higher qualifications from blacks than non-blacks, or viewing whites as

more qualified than minorities who present equivalent r?sum?s. Recent research empha sizes employers' use of race as a proxy for dif

ficult-to-observe productivity characteristics

(Moss and Tilly 2001; Waldinger and Lichter

2003). Where we have detailed field notes on

job interviews, the interactions we observe sug

gest that employers also use race in interpreting and weighing observable skill characteristics. Standards appear to shift as employers evaluate various applicants' qualifications differently depending on their race or ethnicity (see also Biernat and Kobrynowicz 1997; Yarkin, Town, and Wallston 1982).

Race-Coded Jor Channeling

The first two categories of differential treat ment focus on the decision to hire. Beyond this

binary decision, employers also face decisions about where to place a worker within the organi zational hierarchy. Here, at the point of job placement, we observe a third category of dif

ferential treatment. In our review of the testers'

experiences, we noticed that applicants were

sometimes encouraged to apply for different

jobs than the ones initially advertised or about which they had inquired. In many cases, these instances of channeling suggest a race-coding of job types, whereby employers prefer whites for certain positions and minorities for others.

In one case, Zuri, a black tester, applied for a

sales position at a lighting store that had a sign in the front window stating "Salesperson

Wanted." Zuri described the following interac tion: "When she asked what position I was look

ing for I said I was open, but that since they were

looking for a salesperson I would be interested in that. She smiled, put her head in her hand and her elbow on the table and said, T need a stock

boy. Can you do stock boy?'" Zuri's white and Latino test partners, by contrast, were each able

to apply for the advertised sales position. Another black tester, Joe, was similarly chan

neled out of a customer service position in his

application to a Japanese restaurant. Joe report

ed, "I told her I was there to apply for the wait er position and she told me that there were no server positions. I told her it was advertised in the paper, and she said there must have been a

mistake. She said all she had available was a

busboy position. I told her since there was no waiter position, I would apply for the busboy." Later that day, Kevin, his white test partner, was hired for the server position on the spot.

We also observed channeling of the Latino testers. Josue's fieldnotes of an audit at a cloth

ing retailer begin by describing the "young white 20-something women running the place." One of the women interviewed him, asked about

past work experience, and asked which job he was applying for. "I told her 'sales associate,'"

Josue reported, and he presented a r?sum? on which the most recent job listed was as a sales assistant at a sporting goods store. "She then told me that there was a stock position and asked if I would be interested in that." Josue was offered the stocker job and asked to start the next day.

In many cases, these instances of channeling are coded as "positive responses" in the initial

analyses. While our key concern is about access

to employment of any kind, this general focus masks another form of racial bias at work. A closer analysis of the testers' experiences sug

gests that decisions about job placement, like

hiring more generally, often follow a racial

logic. We coded all instances of job channeling across both our teams and counted 53 cases

(compared with 172 positive responses). By comparing the original job title to the suggest ed job type, we then categorized these cases as downward channeling, upward channeling, lat

eral channeling, or unknown. We define down

ward channeling as (1) a move from a job

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DISCRIMINATION IN A LOW-WAGE LABOR MARKET 791

involving contact with customers to a job with out (e.g., from server to busboy), (2) a move from a white-collar position to a manual posi tion (e.g., from sales to stocker), or (3) a move in which hierarchy is clear (e.g., from supervi sor to line worker). We define upward chan

neling as a move in the opposite direction. We focus on these two types of channeling for our current analysis. After eliminating cases in

which all testers within a team were similarly channeled, we have 23 additional cases of dif ferential treatment that were not recorded by our initial measurement of job offers and callbacks.

Like hiring criteria, job placement is also

patterned by race (see Table 1). Black applicants were channeled into lower positions in nine

cases, Latinos were channeled down in five cases, and whites experienced downward chan

neling in only one case. Many of these cases

were restaurant jobs in which the tester applied for a position as a server but was steered to a job as a busboy or dishwasher. In almost all cases,

the original position required extensive cus tomer contact while the suggested position did not (e.g., salesperson to stocker). Testers were

sometimes guided into lower positions because their r?sum?s indicated limited work experi ence, but racial differences in channeling sug gest that insufficient work experience was more

penalizing for minorities than for whites. The one case of downward channeling among white

applicants involved a tester presenting with a criminal background.

In fact, whites were more often channeled up than down. In at least six cases, white testers

were encouraged to apply for jobs that were of a higher-level or required more customer con

tact than the initial position they inquired about. In one case, the white tester was even encour

aged to apply for a supervisory position, despite limited work experience. Kevin reported: "[The employer] then asked me if I had any experience in construction. I told him I did not. He asked if I would be okay working with people that have thick accents like his. I told him that was fine. He then told me that he wanted me to be his new

company supervisor."

Employers appear to have strong views about what kind of person is appropriate for what kind of job, based either on their own assump tions of worker competence or assumptions about what their clients expect or prefer in the

appearance of those serving them. Consistent

Table 1. Job Channeling by Race

Original Job Title Suggested Job

Blacks Channeled Down

Server

Counter person Server

Assistant manager Server

Retail sales

Counter person Sales

Sales

Latinos Channeled Down

Server

Sales

Steam cleaning Counter person Sales

Whites Channeled Down

Server

Latinos Channeled Up Carwash attendant

Warehouse worker

Whites Channeled Up Line cook

Mover

Dishwasher

Driver

Kitchen job Receptionist

Busser

Dishwasher/porter

Busboy

Entry fast-food position

Busboy/runner Maintenance

Delivery

Stockboy Not specified3

Runner

Stock

Exterminator

Delivery Stock person

Busboy

Manager

Computer/office

Waitstaff

Office/telesales

Waitstaff

Auto detailing "Front of the house" job

Company supervisor

Note: This table includes all cases of upward and

downward channeling, except when all testers on a

team were channeled similarly. a Employer told tester that "sales might not be right

for you."

with the testers' field notes, employers appear to apply more stringent hiring criteria to minor

ity workers, preferring whites for jobs that

require greater skill or responsibility. In addi

tion, minorities are disproportionately chan

neled out of customer service positions,

consistent with other research in which employ ers view minority applicants as lacking com

munication skills or as otherwise discomfiting for customers. Although our testers presented

highly effective styles of interpersonal com

munication, the cursory review process for these

jobs often leaves group membership more

salient than any individuating characteristics.

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792 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

Assessment of _^ Job

Categorical Shifting Channeling Exclusion Standards

Figure 3. Discrimination at Three Decision Points

Initial Point of

Contact

The three types of differential treatment we observe illustrate how employers enact their racial preferences in the hiring process. Rather than outward hostility or racial animus, we see

more subtle forms of discouragement or rejec tion. At multiple points in the hiring process, black (or Latino) applicants face additional hur dles or barriers that reduce their chances of

employment and affect the quality of jobs for which they are considered. Figure 3 illustrates the processes identified in the preceding dis cussion. At each of the three decision points, we see pathways deflected by various forms of racial bias. Subtle differences in employers' responses?often imperceptible to the appli cants themselves?produce a pattern of out

comes systematically affected by race.

Complementing the quantitative indicators of differential treatment, these qualitative obser vations provide a rare window into the process es by which discrimination occurs. The three

categories of differential treatment observed in these data point to the range of experiences that constitute discrimination in the employment process.14 In a small number of cases, minori

ty testers were disqualified early on in deci sions that appear to reflect employers' fairly rigid preferences. These instances of categori

14 To be sure, our study captures only a few of the

many pathways in the employment process that are

potentially affected by racial bias. Beyond our win

dow of observation, the pathways of this diagram would presumably continue along later points in the

employment process, including wage-setting deci

sions, training opportunities, promotion, and termi

nation decisions. This research represents one

incremental contribution to understanding?and doc

umenting?the varied decision points that may be

affected by race.

cal exclusion represent one of the most extreme

forms of discrimination, wherein minority appli cants have little opportunity to overcome

employers' potential concerns. By contrast, a

larger number of interactions suggest a more

complicated set of negotiations at play. In eval

uating applicant qualifications, minority appli cants, and black men in particular, appear to be held to a higher standard than their white coun

terparts. Black men are disqualified more read

ily, or hired more reluctantly, than their white

partners with identical skills and experience. Furthermore, racialized assessments of applicant quality and "fit" affect not only the decision to

hire, but also decisions about job placement, with minority applicants more often channeled into positions involving less skill or customer contact. Together, these experiences illustrate

how racial disadvantage is dynamically con structed and reinforced, with the assessment of

applicant qualifications and suitability subject to interpretation and bias. While not an exhaus

tive catalogue of discrimination experiences, the fact that these dynamics are observed in natural settings (with little prompting) attests to their relative frequency and regularity. Our testers' experiences suggest how race shapes

employers' evaluations in subtle but systemat ic ways, with important implications for struc

turing opportunity along racial lines.

DISCUSSION

Sending trained testers with equivalent r?sum?s to apply for entry-level jobs reveals clear evi

dence of discrimination among low-wage employers in New York City. Blacks were only half as likely to receive a callback or job offer relative to equally qualified whites; moreover, black and Latino applicants with clean back

grounds fared no better than a white applicant

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DISCRIMINATION IN A LOW-WAGE LABOR MARKET 793

just released from prison. The magnitude of these racial disparities provides vivid evidence of the continuing significance of race in con

temporary low-wage labor markets. There is a

racial hierarchy among young men favoring whites, then Latinos, and finally blacks as the candidates of last resort.

The episodes of discrimination recorded in this study were seldom characterized by overt racism or hostility. In fact, our testers rarely perceived any signs of clear prejudice. It was

only through side-by-side comparisons of our testers' experiences that patterns of subtle but consistent differential treatment were revealed.

Minority applicants were disqualified more

readily and hired more reluctantly than their white partners with identical skills and experi ence. Additionally, black and Latino applicants were routinely channeled into positions requir ing less customer contact and more manual

work than their white counterparts. In interac

tions between applicants and employers, we see

a small number of cases that reflect employers' seemingly rigid racial preferences. More often, differential treatment emerged in the social interaction of the job interview. Employers appeared to see more potential in the stated

qualifications of white applicants, and they more commonly viewed white applicants as a

better fit for more desirable jobs. Our findings of discrimination are particu

larly striking because the testers in this study represent a best-case scenario for low-wage job seekers. The testers were college-educated

young men with effective styles of self-presen tation. Although posing as high school gradu ates with more limited skills, these young men stood well above the typical applicant for these

low-wage jobs. The effects of race among indi viduals with fewer hard and soft skill advantages may well be larger than those estimated here.

At the same time, while we find robust evi dence of racial discrimination, we should be careful not to interpret these results as showing the level of discrimination actively experienced by minority job seekers in the New York labor market. Our sampling design, based on employ ers, not workers, over-represents small firms

relative to their share of employment. The sam

ple includes many restaurants and independent retailers for whom hiring is less bureaucratic, and who lack the human resource departments that manage the equal employment opportuni

ty obligations of large firms (Dobbin et al.

1993). Nevertheless, our sampled employers well represent the kinds of low-skill service work that dominate low-wage urban labor mar

kets.

A second limitation on the generalizability of our findings results from our sampling proce dures based on classified advertisements.

Surveys of job seekers suggest that 25 to 30 per cent of low skill jobs are filled by classified ads; the remainder are filled through some combi nation of network referrals, walk-in applica

tions, and employment agencies (H?lzer 1987). These search strategies may generate a differ ent distribution of employers from that report ed here. Some argue that the focus on jobs advertised through metropolitan newspapers understates the extent of discrimination. Firms that wish to discriminate, it is argued, are more

likely to advertise job openings through more restrictive channels, such as networks of exist

ing employees, employment agencies, or more

selective publications (Elliott 2000; Fix and

Struyk 1993; Petersen, Saporta, and Seidel

2000). Others, by contrast, argue that any ran

dom sample of employers will overstate the extent of discrimination actually experienced by job seekers. If minority applicants can identify and avoid firms that discriminate, the actual incidence of labor market discrimination will be

correspondingly reduced (Becker 1957; Heckman 1998).

Of course, minority workers' ability to avoid the effects of discrimination by self-selecting into nondiscriminatory firms requires that a sufficient number of nondiscriminatory employ ers exist; that there are no differences in the qual ity of jobs offered by employers who are more and less likely to discriminate; and that the search costs necessary to locate nondiscrimi

natory employers are trivial. Future research

using microdata to track the search patterns and outcomes of black and white job seekers could better address these issues. From our data, we

can safely conclude that job searches across a wide range of employers represented by the classified ads of five New York newspapers reveal substantial discrimination. Understanding how job seekers adapt to this reality remains a

challenge for future research.

Our findings for the New York City labor market add to evidence of racial discrimina tion in employment reported from recent field

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794 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

experiments in Milwaukee, Boston, and Chicago (Bertrand and Mullainathan 2004; Pager 2003). The significant evidence of discrimination found in these studies contrasts sharply with recent survey research showing small racial dif

ferences in wages (Farkas and Vicknair 1996; Neal and Johnson 1996). How might these dis

parate findings be reconciled? First, as noted

above, the presence of discrimination in the labor market may lead workers to differential

ly sort across employers, such that minority job seekers queue for jobs offered by employers who are less likely to discriminate. These

dynamics can lead to longer search or wait times for minority job seekers, which might not be reflected in ultimate wage offers. Indeed, data from the late 1990s show that the unem

ployment spells of black men (3.1 months) are about twice as long as those for whites (1.6 months) (Gottschalck 2003:2). This suggests that the primary effects of discrimination on labor market outcomes may be reflected in

employment differentials rather than wages.15 Second, the experience of discrimination may

add to the psychic costs of the job search

process, prompting some to opt out altogether. If discrimination discourages all but the most

motivated and able black job seekers, black

wage earners would represent an increasingly select group. Since the 1990s, increasing num bers of young black men have dropped out of the formal labor market, contributing to an arti

ficial convergence of black and white wages (Western and Pettit 2005). Without effectively accounting for the processes that precede labor

15 Johnson and Neal (1998), for example, find

that after controlling for cognitive ability and other

human capital characteristics, black-white differ

ences in employment among young men remain large and statistically significant. The importance of

employment over wages for racial inequality in eco

nomic status is likely to be especially great for young

non-college-educated men, for whom the overall

level of wage dispersion is low. Later in the life

course, as wage dispersion increases and labor force

experience accumulates, the racial wage gap becomes

more pronounced (Tomaskovic-Devey, Thomas, and

Johnson 2005). For a historical example, see Whatley

(1990), who shows that despite the substantial racial

barriers to employment that existed among Northern

firms after World War I, blacks and whites experi enced remarkably similar wage rates.

force participation?including the discouraging effects of discrimination?wage estimates can

account for only one incomplete picture of the

larger employment process.

Our findings add to a large research program demonstrating the continuing contribution of discrimination to racial inequality in the post civil rights era. Still, significant questions remain unanswered. The audit experiment nec

essarily focuses on employers' hiring behav iors but does not examine the skills, preferences, and networks of job seekers. We do not know, and few research designs have been devised to

test, the relative magnitude of the effects of dis crimination compared with the effects of human and social capital. Such an analysis would need to study both employers as they screen job appli cants and workers as they search for jobs.

The effects of discrimination, relative to human and social capital, should also be defined

broadly. As evidence of discrimination in the

post-civil rights era accumulates, new research

should go beyond determining whether dis crimination is present to consider how the effects of discrimination unfold over the life cycle and across social space. Episodes of discrimination

may not only cause unemployment at one point in time, but may have long-term effects that

weaken minority workers' attachment to the

labor market and reduce labor force participa tion. Discrimination may produce broad cul tural effects in which work itself is

de-legitimated as a fair source of opportunity. The effects of discrimination may also vary across the population, concentrating perhaps

among the young men whose employment rates

are lowest. Tracing these larger and more var

ied effects of discrimination show both the

advantages and limits of the experimental method used here. The experiment allows us to infer discrimination with great certainty, but the effects of discrimination are narrowly defined. The broader effects of discrimination? on the cultural dimensions of economic life and over the life course?are harder to pinpoint but

may indicate more fundamental and intractable

inequalities. A research agenda that includes these wider consequences would be less skep tical that discrimination exists and more curious about its continuing effects on not just employ ment inequality, but on American race relations more broadly.

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DISCRIMINATION IN A LOW-WAGE LABOR MARKET 795

Devah Pager is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Faculty Associate of the Office of Population Research at Princeton University. Her book, Marked:

Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass

Incarceration, investigates the racial and economic

consequences of large scale imprisonment for con

temporary U.S. labor markets.

Bruce Western is Professor of Sociology and direc

tor of the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and

Social Policy at Harvard University.

Bart Bonikowski is a PhD candidate in sociology at

Princeton University. In addition to his work on strat

ification, he is completing a project that compares

popular conceptions of the nation among the popu lations of 30 countries.

APPENDIX

Robustness Checks

We examine the robustness of our primary results by looking at racial and ethnic contrasts for different subsets of the data (Table Al). Although small numbers in certain cells lead to some instability in estimates, these breakdowns can examine the consistency of effects across the

full range of the sample. To account for learn

ing or adaptation by the testers, we estimate effects for the first and second halves of the

experimental period. In each period, whites and Latinos received significantly more positive responses than did blacks, and whites received

slightly more positive responses than did Latinos. To examine whether our results depend

strongly on any particular area within New York, we separate the experimental effects by location. Over half the audited employers were located in Manhattan. We found the pattern of black dis

advantage throughout Manhattan and in the outer boroughs. To examine whether the first tester sent to an employer was more likely to be

successful, we randomized the order in which testers were sent. Experimental effects are sim

ilar regardless of which tester interviewed first.

Finally, we compare the outcomes of audits in which testers had little or no interaction with the

employer with those characterized by more sub

stantial personal contact. Here we see some evi

dence that personal contact reduces racial dis

parities in employment, consistent with the notion that individualizing information can help offset the effects of negative stereotypes.

The bottom half of Table Al presents these same comparisons for the team in which the

white applicants presented evidence of a felony conviction. Across these comparisons, we find

treatment effects close to zero, supporting the

finding that employers did not distinguish strongly between whites with criminal records and minority job seekers without. In short, these results indicate a large racial preference among

New York employers for white job applicants over black applicants, smaller preference for whites over Latinos and Latinos over blacks, and little difference between white felons and

minorities with clean backgrounds. All results are robust to tester effects and experimental effects and appear to be roughly uniform across New York City.

Results ry Tester Teams

In the course of fielding two three-person teams of testers, we used 10 different testers: two

Latinos, four blacks, and four whites. In each

three-person team consisting of a white, a black,

and a Latino, we combined the 10 testers into six different unique combinations. Before pool ing the data across combinations of testers,

Heckman and Siegelman (1993) recommend

testing for the homogeneity of responses across combinations. The columns in Table A2 repre sent mutually exclusive outcomes; overall

response rates by race can be calculated by summing all columns in which a given race

group is represented. A chi-square test within each team fails to reject the null hypothesis of

homogeneity across combinations. With this evidence of homogeneity, we report treatment

effects pooled across testers. Table A2 reports the detailed experimental results for each unique combination of testers.

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796 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

Table Al. Percentage of Positive Responses and Race Differences, by Date, Employer Address, and Race of First Tester

Subsample (N) White Latino Black

(W) (L) (B)

Race Differences0

W/L W/B L/B

Total (171) 31.0 25.1 15.2

Dateb Feb. 23 to April 7 (84) 29.8 23.8 9.5

April 8 to July 16 (84) 33.3 27.4 21.4 Location0

Below 34th St. (56) 23.2 21.4 12.5

34th St. to 72nd St. (46) 30.4 21.7 17.4

Above 72nd St. (18) 33.3 22.2 5.6

Other (50) 40.0 34.0 20.0

Race of First Tester

White (68) 27.9 23.5 10.3

Black (45) 40.0 31.1 20.0

Latino (53) 28.3 22.6 18.9

Type of Positive Response0 Callback (171) 12.9 9.9 2.9

Job offer (171) 21.1 17.0 12.9

Personal Contacte

No personal contact (46)f 10.9 6.5 0

Personal contact (65) 52.3 46.2 29.2

1.2 (.02) 2.0 (.00) 1.7 (.00)

1.3

1.2 (.08) (.04)

3.1

1.6 (.00) (.00)

2.5

1.3 (.00) (.05)

1.1 (.31) 1.4 (.02) 1.5 (.00) 1.2 (.12)

1.2 (.11) 1.3 (.06) 1.3 (.09)

1.9 (.00) 1.8 (.00) 6.0 (.00) 2.0 (.00)

1.3

1.2

1.7

1.1

(.10) (.02)

2.7

2.0

1.5

4.4

1.6

(.09) >10.9 (.11) 1.8

(.00) (.00) (.00)

(.00) (.00)

(.00)

1.7 (.03) 1.3 (.15)

4.0 (.00) 1.7 (.00)

2.3 (.00) 1.6 (.01) 1.2 (.15)

3.4

1.3

>6.5

1.6

(.00) (.02)

(.00)

Subsample (N) White felon

(Wf) Latino

(L) Black (B)

Race Differences3

Wf/L Wf/B L/B

Total (169) 17.2 15.4 13.0

Dateb March 2 to April 13 (83) 16.9 13.3 10.8 April 14 to Aug. 6(82) 17.1 17.1 15.9

Location0

Below 34th St. (51) 9.8 7.8 3.9

34th St. to 72nd St. (46) 13.0 17.4 13.0

Above 72nd St. (7) 0 0 0 Other (62) 29.0 21.0 21.0

Race of First Tester

White (53) 20.8 18.9 13.2

Black (59) 18.6 15.3 15.3

Latino (52) 11.5 11.5 11.5

Type of Positive Response0 Callback (169) 11.2 9.5 5.3

Job offer (169) 5.9 6.5 7.7

Personal Contacte

No personal contact (75) 8.0 8.0 4.0

Personal contact (39) 35.9 28.2 30.8

1.1 (.25) 1.3 (.08)

1.3 (.16) 1.0 (.43)

1.3 (.30) .8 (.74)

1.6 (.06) 1.1 (.35)

2.5 (.05) 1.0 (.42)

1.4 (.08) 1.4 (.09)

1.1 (.34) 1.2 (.20) 1.0 (.44)

1.2 (.23) .9 (.58)

1.0 (.45) 1.3 (.12)

1.6 (.13) 1.2 (.15) 1.0 (.42)

2.1 (.01) .8 (.77)

2.0 (.09) 1.2 (.24)

1.2 (.17)

1.2 (.21) 1.1 (.34)

2.0 (.00) 1.3 (.14)

1.0 (.46)

1.4 (.15) 1.0 (.39) 1.0 (.41)

1.8 (.02) .8 (.65)

2.0 (.04) .9 (.58)

a Numbers in parentheses are bootstraps-values for a one-sided test of whether the ratio is less than or equal to

one. b Changes over time capture several possible effects: learning or adaptation by testers, compositional changes in

the types of employers brought into the sample at different points, and changes in the business cycle. c Street addresses are for Manhattan.

d Because some testers received both a job offer and a subsequent callback, the sum of these two columns may be

greater than the total listed above (in which a positive response is calculated by the presence of a callback or a job

offer). e Analyses of "personal contact" include only those cases in which all tester partners experienced personal con

tact; the "no personal contact" analyses include cases in which none of the testers experienced personal contact.

This exclusion avoids any confounding effect of employers' racial preferences as reflected in the decision to

interview. f Because the response rate for blacks in this subsample is zero, ratios in which blacks are in the denominator are

undefined. For the purposes of this analysis, we represent this ratio as greater than the value of the numerator

over one.

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DISCRIMINATION IN A LOW-WAGE LABOR MARKET 797

Table A2. Detailed Experimental Results, by Unique Combination of Testers

Who Gets a Positive Response (percent)

Group All None W + L W + B L + B W

1 2 3 4 5 6 Total

11

7.5

36.4

33.3

28.6

0

12.9

69.2

67.9

18.2

33.3

57.1

66.7

63.7

4.4

11.3

0

33.3

14.3

0

7.6

3.3

0

0

0

0

0

White with criminal record (posterior predictive probability ofx2 statistic:

1

2

3

4

5

6

Total

3.7

4.9

2.8

0

0

0

3.6

75.3

56.1

77.8

60

75

100 71.0

2.5

2.4

8.3

0

0

0

3.6

2.5

2.4

2.8

0

0

0

2.4

1.2

7.3

2.8

20

0

0

3.6

7.7

9.4

18.2

0

0

33.3

8.8

.588) 1A

14.6

2.8

0

0

0

7.7

4.4

3.8

18.2

0

0

0

4.7

4.9

7.3

0

20

0

0

4.7

0

0

9.1

0

0

0

.6

2.5

4.9

2.8

0

25

0

3.6

N

White without criminal record (posterior predictive probability of\2 statistic: .054)a 91

53

11

6

7

3

171

81 41 36 5 4 2

169

Note: W = white; L =

Latino; B = black. Columns of "Who Gets a Positive Response" represent mutually exclu

sive categories (i.e., rows sum to 100 percent). In the first experiment (no criminal record), there was only a

single case (group 3) in which a black tester received a callback when neither of his test partners received one. a The chi-square test is undefined with marginal counts of zero. We calculate a posterior predictive ?>-value by

simulating counts under independence for nonzero cells.

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