Ethnic labour market discrimination: Taste or statistics?
Recently, there was much talk in Belgium about the inactivity among 25- to 64-year-olds in Belgium with a non-EU27 nationality. With 44.2% of the 25- to 64-year-olds with a non-EU27 nationality neither working nor looking for work, Belgium is at the very back of the European rankings. This level of inactivity is a problem given the intention of the Flemish, Walloon and federal governments to get more people into work. In this blog post, I look at one of the possible explanations for this high level of inactivity on the employers’ side, namely hiring discrimination. More specifically, the scientific evidence for the mechanisms of hiring discrimination is discussed, and some solutions to counteract discrimination based on economics (as a science) are provided. ...