ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that African-Americans face differential treatment when searching for jobs and this may still be a factor in why they do poorly in the labor market. If employers matched base rates in the population, the few African-Americans who apply to these jobs should receive a higher callback rate than Whites. Every measure of economic success reveals significant racial inequality in the US labor market. Compared to Whites, African-Americans are twice as likely to be unemployed and earn nearly 25 percent less when they are employed. If qualified African-Americans are thought to be in high demand, then employers with average quality jobs might feel that an equally talented African-American would never accept an offer from them and thereby never call her or him in for an interview. The uniformity of the racial gap across occupations is also troubling for a statistical discrimination interpretation.
