Why do we see so few working class and ethnic minority young people in top jobs?

By Professor Lindsey Macmillan, Dr Claire Tyler, and Dr Catherine Dilnot

We know that people from working class backgrounds and ethnic minority groups have worse labour market outcomes than their more affluent and white peers. We also know that they are less likely to work in professional occupations early in their careers. These are the types of roles that offer the first rung of the ladder to careers with higher levels of job security, and better longer term earnings prospects, so this ultimately limits their social mobility. Yet to date we have not been able to distinguish between whether a) working class and ethnic minority groups are not applying to these roles, or whether b) they are applying but are not being hired. Our new Nuffield-funded report provides the first large-scale multi-sector evidence that these disadvantaged groups are applying to these roles but are not being offered positions at the same rate as their more advantaged peers.

Recruitment processes rather than outreach?

Using unique individual-level information on over 250,000 applicants to 17 employers’ entry-level roles across accountancy, law, and the public sector, we can show that most of the socio-economic background (SEB) and ethnic inequalities that we observe in entry to professional roles appear to be driven by employer decisions made during the recruitment process rather than a lack of aspiration or applications from underrepresented groups. .

While there has been a lot of emphasis on outreach from employers to diversify workforces, we find that the applicant pools to graduate programmes are representative of the available pool of talent from linked-administrative data records. While rates of withdrawal from programmes are equally spread across applicants from different backgrounds, final job offer rates are heavily skewed in favour of more advantaged applicants (with parents from professional backgrounds) and white applicants. Working class applicants are 32% less likely to get a job offer than their more advantaged counterparts. Black and Asian applicants are 45% and 29% less likely to get a job offer than their white counterparts respectively.

Figure 1: Proportion of graduates at various stages of the recruitment process, by parental NS-SEC

 

Figure 1 illustrates this point for working class compared to professional background applicants. The first column shows the proportion of all graduates that come from each social class, based on linked-administrative data (National Pupil Database linked to Higher Education Statistics Agency data) breakdowns. The second column shows our total applicant pool to graduate-level entry routes across all employers. As we can see, working class applicants (green part of the bar) are well represented in the pool of applicants. But as we move to the third and fourth bar, the proportion of working class applicants drops while the proportion of professional background applicants increases through the recruitment process.

These translate to offer gaps of over 30% for working class applicants relative to professional background applicants when we model offer rates for those who have not chosen to withdraw from the recruitment process – focusing then on only decisions made by employers rather than individual applicants. Of course, it could be the case that working class applicants have different prior attainment or live in different places to more advantaged applicants, and this could be leading to them being less likely to receive job offers to these programmes. Our analysis allows us to take this into account by looking at offer rates between applicants from different backgrounds with otherwise similar characteristics, comparing like-for-like. When we do this, as shown in Figure 2, we still find that working class applicants are 18% less likely to get a job offer than applicants from professional backgrounds, even comparing applicants who attended similar universities, studied similar subjects, and applied to similar roles.

Figure 2: Offer rates to graduate programmes, conditional on observable differences across applicants, by parental NS-SEC

Note: Raw models contain employer fixed effects only; + Demographics adds controls for region of origin, and visa status; + University adds controls for university category and subject studies; + Application adds controls for networks, region of office, and job role applied to. Points represent % estimates while lines represent 95% confidence intervals.

 

For ethnic minority applicants, we see a similar story – ethnic minority applicants are actually overrepresented in the applicant pools for these graduate training programmes, but are less likely to receive job offers, relative to white applicants. This is true even when we take into account differences in prior attainment and other factors that might lead to differential offer rates. Figure 3 shows that Black applicants are still 33% less likely to receive a job offer than a white applicant, even when comparing applicants that look the same on paper. Asian applicants are 25% less likely to receive a job offer than their similar white counterparts.

When considering the intersection between socio-economic background and ethnicity, we observe a double disadvantage for working class ethnic minority groups, who are 37% less likely to get an offer than otherwise similar white applicants from professional backgrounds.

Figure 3: Offer rates to graduate programmes, conditional on observable differences across applicants, by ethnicity

 

Note: Raw models contain employer fixed effects only; + Demographics adds controls for region of origin, and visa status; + University adds controls for university category and subject studies; + Application adds controls for networks, region of office, and job role applied to. Points represent % estimates while lines represent 95% confidence intervals.

 

Recommendations

The analysis and discussions with employers and universities has led us to make a number of recommendations. For employers, there’s a clear need for more tracking of diversity data and reviewing of recruitment processes. Employers who performed particularly well at maintaining diverse applicant pools proactively monitored their recruitment processes and their applicant pool. The report goes into more detail about particular stages of the recruitment process that are problematic and close monitoring of both online testing and design of face-to-face assessments could lead to wider recruitment of potential talent. Employers should also look to broaden the group of universities they work with and ensure there is relevant assistance for careers teams to support their students in applying to roles. Universities can also play a key role in ensuring that information is readily passed on to those who need it most, including the benefits of applying early to graduate schemes, and providing more assistance with tests and assessments.