Race, Religion, and Immigration: Experimental Evidence from the Labor Market Marina Mileo Gorsuch Deborah Rho Department of Economics & Political Science Department of Economics St. Catherine University University of St. Thomas
[email protected] [email protected] In this project, we examine employers’ response to black immigrants compared to native-born black Americans. Between July 2017 and December 2018, we applied to publicly advertised positions using fictional resumes that are manipulated on perceived race and ethnicity (Somali American, African American, and white American) and examine the proportion of resumes that are contacted by employers. We find that male African American applicants are 5 percentage points less likely to be contacted than equivalent white American applicants. Somali American applicants are 11 percentage points less likely to be contacted by employers than equivalent white American applicants and 6 percentage points less likely to be contacted than equivalent African American applicants. For female applicants, the effects followed a similar pattern, but were muted. Signals of language ability, education, and religiosity showed little impact on the proportion contacted by an employer. This project would not have been possible without our amazing team of research assistants. We are incredibly grateful for the hard work of Pachia Xiong, Joshua Edelstein, Anna Starks, Jenna Czarnecki, Carina Anderson, Hannah Lucey, Jordan Ewings, Zach LeVene, and Michael Gleason. We thank the Russell Sage Foundation, the University of St. Thomas and the Minnesota Population Center (P2C HD041023) for generously providing funding for this project. 1 Discrimination against black Americans is often thought of as monolithic – with prejudice targeting all black Americans equally.