Racial bias can be present in any step of the employment process, from job search and application screening to assignment of hired workers to tasks, work hours, wages, and promotions. To meaningfully improve racial equity in employment, employers, policymakers, and researchers must understand the many ways in which employment processes related to hiring, promotion, and wage setting contribute to racial disparities in employment outcomes. This project will systematically review what is known about how employment processes can present barriers for workers of color, as well as explore and identify potentially promising strategies to address biases in the low-wage labor market.
Project activities include:
- Collaborator Engagement. As a foundation, the study will solicit insights from diverse groups of interested parties. Those groups include employers, workers, policymakers, program operators, and researchers. Project collaborators will contribute in multiple ways. They will provide input on the nature of the problem, where to intervene, and examples of potentially promising interventions. They will direct the study team to literature that might be difficult to find (e.g., grey literature) or that should be a priority for the team’s review. Finally, they will help disseminate project deliverables.
- Literature Review. The literature review will provide a comprehensive summary of the current evidence base regarding the nature and biases of employment processes, and opportunities to “disrupt” them. It will cover all steps in the employment process: job search, application, application review, hiring, wage assignment, benefits, scheduling, retention and promotion. For each step of the employment process, the literature review will document practices that aim to detect and address racial bias. It will also suggest interventions that merit further exploration. The literature review will be a public-facing document and disseminated widely.
- Site Identification. A field scan and site visits to document promising practices and a final report to OPRE will propose research questions for future inquiry and potential study designs to answer them.
Abt Associates Inc. is leading the project, in partnership with Dr. Susan Lambert at the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Public Policy, and Practice. Dr. Harry Holzer at the Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy is a senior advisor to the team.
Point(s) of contact: Megan Reid.