Workplace Discrimination: Who Suffers the Most?

As you can see, black Americans are almost twice as likely to be out of work as white Americans. According to theNew York Times, a college degree doesn’t always help when it comes to race. “The unemployment rate for black male college graduates twenty-five and older in 2009 has been nearly twice that of white male college graduates—8.4 percent compared with 4.4 percent.”

If African American applicants with a college degree are having problems, imagine how hopeless it must feel to anyone with a criminal record. Devah Pager, sociology professor and author of Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration studies the problems ex-convicts face when looking for a job. Pager randomly assigned young, articulate, attractive, and capable men criminal records and then sent them looking for jobs. Ex-offenders received less than half of the callbacks of equally qualified applicants without criminal backgrounds. She also found that it is easier for a white person with a criminal record to get a job than a black person with no criminal record.

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