Systemic Discrimination Among Large U.S. Employers

We study the results of a massive nationwide correspondence experiment sending more than 83,000 fictitious applications with randomized characteristics to geographically dispersed jobs posted by 108 largest U.S. employers. Distinctively Black names reduce probability employer contact 2.1 percentage points relative distinctively white names. The magnitude this racial gap in rates differs substantially across firms, exhibiting between-company standard deviation 1.9 points. Despite an insignificant average between male and female applicants, we find gender gaps 2.7 points, revealing that some firms favor applicants while others women. Company-specific are temporally spatially persistent, negatively correlated firm profitability, federal contractor status, measure recruiting centralization. Discrimination exhibits little geographical dispersion, but two digit industry explains roughly half cross-firm variation both gaps. Contact highly concentrated particular companies, top quintile discrimination responsible for nearly lost contacts experiment. Controlling false discovery 5% level, 23 individual companies found discriminate against applicants. Our findings establish systemic illegal is among select set large employers, many which can be identified high confidence using scale inference methods.