A study by a PhD student at the University of Ghent (UGent) on labour market discrimination has found that ethnicity and age are still the factors that most often lead to discrimination against people that are seeking employment. In his study, Louis Lippens compared practical tests carried out to detect labour market discrimination in countries around the world between 2005 and 2020.
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Study finds that age and ethnicity remain the biggest labour market discrimination issues
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The results of around 900,000 such tests were examined. The tests were fictitious job applications made between 2005 and 2020. Two or more almost identical applications were made. Only a few specific details were changed such as the applicant’s photo their age or ethnicity.
Louis Lippens founds that generally speaking, applicants aged 50 and above received much less positive feedback than applicants aged 30. This was the case in 34% of the applications studied. The PhD student also found that age-related discrimination is more common in Europe than in the United States.
Ethnicity a factor the world over
Discrimination against people living with a physical handicap is also a big issue. Discrimination against people living with a physical handicap was found in 41% of the applications that were examined in the study.
Immigrants, people of foreign descent and people that are members of ethnic minorities are discriminated against on the labour market almost everywhere in the world. This was found to be the case in 29% of the cases examined. Here in Europe this was found to be particularly true among people of North African or Middle Eastern descent.
Meanwhile, sexual orientation is no longer a source of discrimination on the labour in most countries and certainly not in Belgium. Nevertheless, it is still an issue in certain countries.
The study concludes that labour market discrimination is an remains an issue worldwide.