Daniel Tencer, HuffPost Canada, June 23, 2019

Canadian visible minorities are more likely to face discrimination in hiring than their American counterparts, according to a new survey of nine countries that found Canada is near the top for prejudice in hiring.

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In a study published in Sociological Science this week, Northwestern University sociologist Lincoln Quillian and colleagues analyzed the results of 97 “field experiments” in hiring, in which fictional job applicants were created to track how they fared in the job interview process.

In all, the researchers looked at more than 200,000 job applications, and broke down the results by race, to see whether minority candidates with similar qualifications to white ones got as many call-backs.

To no one’s surprise, they didn’t.

The data “shows nearly ubiquitous discrimination against racial and ethnic minority groups,” the researchers concluded in a paper published Monday ― but there are notable differences between results in the nine countries surveyed.

France and Sweden were found to have the highest likelihood of discrimination. A job applicant from a visible minority group in France is 43 per cent more likely to be discriminated against than a similar applicant in the United States. In Sweden, they are 30 per cent more likely to encounter prejudice in hiring.

Canada and the U.K. tied for third place, with minorities there 11 per cent more likely to face discrimination in hiring.

It found that people of African, Asian and Middle Eastern descent all experience similar levels of discrimination.

”For white immigrants, by contrast, discrimination is lower and is often not statistically significant,” the study stated, adding that “there is no evidence of ‘reverse’ discrimination against white natives” in hiring.

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“No other countries require monitoring of the racial and ethnic makeup of ranks of employees as is required for large employers in the U.S.,” Quillian said in a statement. “For instance, large employers in the U.S. are required to report race and ethnicity of employees at different ranks to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.”

Meanwhile, in France, where discrimination is most common, employers aren’t allowed to inquire about the race of applicants.

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