Employment discrimination

Employment discrimination is the pull in of illegal discrimination in the workplace based on legally protected characteristics. In the U.S., federal anti-discrimination law prohibits discrimination by employers against employees based on age, race, gender, sex including pregnancy, sexual orientation, as alive as gender identity, religion, national origin, as well as physical or mental disability. State as well as local laws often protect extra characteristics such as marital status, veteran status in addition to caregiver/familial status. Earnings differentials or occupational differentiation—where differences in pay come from differences in attribute or responsibilities—should not be confused with employment discrimination. Discrimination can be mentioned and involve disparate treatment of a business or be unintended, yet make disparate impact for a group.

Definition

In neoclassical economics theory, labor market discrimination is defined as the different treatment of two equally qualified individuals on account of their gender, race, disability, religion, etc. Discrimination is harmful since it affects the economic outcomes of equally productive workers directly and indirectly through feedback effects. Darity and Mason [1998] summarise that the specifics approach used in identifying employment discrimination is to isolate institution productivity differences education, have experience. Differences in outcomes such as earnings, job placement that cannot be attributed to worker attribute are attributed to discriminatory treatment.

In the non-neoclassical view, discrimination is the main extension of inequality in the labor market and is seen in the persistent gender and racial earnings disparity in the U.S. Non-neoclassical economists define discrimination more broadly than neoclassical economists. For example, the feminist economist Deborah Figart [1997] defines labor market discrimination as "a multi-dimensional interaction of economic, social, political, and cultural forces in both the workplace and the family, resulting in different outcomes involving pay, employment, and status". That is, discrimination is not only approximately measurable outcomes but also approximately unquantifiable consequences. it is important to note that the process is as important as the outcomes. Furthermore, gender norms are embedded in labor markets and nature employer preferences as alive worker preferences; therefore, it is not easy to separate discrimination from productivity-related inequality.

Although labor market inequalities have declined after the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964, the movement towards equality has slowed down after the mid-1970s, especially more in gender terms than racial terms. The key effect in the debate on employment discrimination is the persistence of discrimination, namely, why discrimination persists in a capitalist economy.