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Concept
Employment discrimination
Summary
Employment discrimination is a form 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, and gender identity), religion, national origin, and physical or mental disability. State and local laws often protect additional characteristics such as marital status, veteran status and caregiver/familial status. Earnings differentials or occupational differentiation—where differences in pay come from differences in qualifications or responsibilities—should not be confused with employment discrimination. Discrimination can be intended and involve disparate treatment of a group or be unintended, yet create disparate impact for a group.
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 standard approach used in identifying employment discrimination is to isolate group productivity differences (education, work experience). Differences in outcomes (such as earnings, job placement) that cannot be attributed to worker qualifications are attributed to discriminatory treatment.
In the non-neoclassical view, discrimination is the main source 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".
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