This data visualization is based on data from the article “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination” by Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan (2004). In this article, Bertrand and Mullainathan studied the role of racial discrimination in the labor market by sending resumes to job ads in newspapers in Boston and Chicago. The signal for the applicant’s race was manipulated by changing the name of the job applicant to either be an “African-American- or White-sounding” name. Bertrand and Mullainathan responded to 1,300 employment ads with 4,870 resumes and found that resumes with White-sounding names received almost 50% more requests for interviews from potential employers.
The interactive plot below allows you to explore their data. If you hover your mouse over a bar, you can see the callback rate for various groups. It is important to remember that the variables for applicant race and sex are based on signals on the resume.