Can skills alleviate ethnic discrimination in hiring?

Abstract

This study investigates whether the social, digital, and analytical skills of job applicants, as well as their knowledge about the profession, can mitigate ethnic disparities in entry-level positions in the labour market. We conducted a survey experiment among a large, nationally representative sample of German firms that hire apprentices. We asked recruiters to evaluate the probability of inviting fictitious applicants to a job interview based on randomised characteristics, including ethnicity, skill quality, gender, time of residence, and education level. Our results show heterogeneous effects of skills on ethnic discrimination. While social skills help alleviate discrimination, our results indicate that discrimination intensifies at higher levels of knowledge about the profession, implying greater disparities due to ethnic discrimination at the top of the skill distribution. We also found that the effect of skills differs depending on the ethnicity of the applicant.

Shirshikova, A., Cörvers, F., Montizaan, R., & Pfeifer, H. (2025). Can skills alleviate ethnic discrimination in hiring? Evidence from the German apprenticeship market. (pp. 49). ROA Research Memoranda No. 002