Uncovering Barriers in Employment to Expand Workforce Access

Highlights

Racial bias can be present in any step of the employment process.
Analyzes how hiring practices impact fair access to employment opportunities.
Actionable guidance to address bias throughout the employment process

The Challenge

Employment process and hiring approaches can impact fair access to new employment, mentorship access, compensation determinations, and promotion and retention decisions. Improving the accessibility of new opportunities. This project comes at a time of both need and opportunity as many sectors have higher demands for new hires than those available in the market. Together, these factors provide a window of opportunity to examine and address biases in low-wage labor market employment processes.

To address these issues, the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) in the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded an Abt Associates-led team a contract valued at up to $1.5 million to analyze how employment processes in the low-wage labor market contribute to racial disparities in employment.

The Approach

The Abt team will review what is known about how employment processes can present barriers for workers of color and explore and identify potentially promising strategies to address biases in the low-wage labor market. The team will assess the presence of racial bias and barriers in various phases of the employment process, including how employers advertise jobs, screen applications, assign tasks and work hours, offer mentoring, set compensation, and decide on retention and promotions. The project will center on the experiences of people of color who have lived experience in low-wage work, engaging them in the development of all project activities and products.

Project activities include a literature review and collecting insights from relevant stakeholders, who can provide diverse perspectives on problems and potential solutions. The literature review will document practices that aim to detect and address racial bias and suggest interventions that merit further exploration.

Abt is leading the project in partnership with Dr. Susan Lambert at the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Public Policy, and Practice. Dr. Harry Holzer at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy is a senior advisor to the team.

The Results

Abts final report synthesizes findings across all project activities and proposes research questions for future studies. Translating insights into practical guidance, Abt also led the development of practitioner briefs for executives, managers, HR staff, and workforce practitioners. Tailored to each audience, these briefs offer evidence-based strategies for identifying and addressing bias throughout the employment process.

Together, this work supports initiatives to inform and improve practices that create more equitable employment opportunities for all.

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