We all know how hard it is to find a job during a recession. Unfortunately, race, gender, sexual orientation, weight, smoking habits, and age can make your job search even harder and cause workplace discrimination.
Race
According to the December 2009, Bureau of Labor Employment Situation Survey, the unemployment rates for the third quarter of 2009 were as follows:
- Adult men 10.1 percent
- Adult women 7.7 percent
- Teenagers 25.1 percent
- White 8.8 percent
- Black or African American 15.0 percent
- Latino ethnicity or Hispanic 12.7 percent
As you can see, black Americans are almost twice as likely to be out of work as white Americans. According to the New 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.
Gender
Women may not be as discriminated against as they used to be—as a whole. However, pregnant women are still having a hard time. According to Time magazine, “Complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) are on a decade-long rise, up 65 percent from 1992 to 2007. And the number of cases the EEOC has decided to take on has quadrupled in the same period.”
Not hiring pregnant women can lead to the unfair and dangerous practice of not hiring women because they may someday get pregnant. Companies consider health insurance costs and time off when looking at women who are, or may someday, become pregnant. According to a recent article by Mother Jones, “Every industrialized country except the U.S. and Australia has paid parental leave with a guaranteed job on return to work.” That same article states, “Women make 80 cents on the male dollar, even accounting for time off to raise kids. If that factor is not accounted for, women make 56 cents. Over her career, the average working woman loses $1.2 million to wage inequity.” Mother Jones goes on to report, “Women over sixty-five are almost twice as likely to be poor as men.” This is interesting as the article also states that, “Companies with women in top jobs see 35 percent higher returns than those without.”
