Work & Employment

• • In 2023 the unemployment rate in the UK was 4%. White British unemployment was just below the national average. Rates for Pakistani and Bangladeshi were over twice as high and therefore they are twice as likely to be unemployed
• • Black male graduates in London are nearly twice as likely to be unemployed as their white counterparts (18% compared to 10%)
• • In the UK a lower % of people from ethnic minorities work as managers, directors and senior officials. 10.7% of White people work in these positions compared to 8.8% of ethnic minorities, This was particularly bad for Black people at 5.7%.
• Barron & Norris

  • found that certain ethnic minorities were more likely to be in the secondary labour market and often unable to progress to top positions in workplaces
• Pilkington - suggests that there is an “ethnic penalty” where a person's ethnic background continues to play a role in their position in the labour market
• Davidson (supporting Pilkington's point) - women face the glass ceiling while ethnic women face the concrete ceiling.
• Bhopal - conducted a study on Asian women in London who were on low paid jobs or unemployed

  • She found that there were cultural reasons for their low economic activity believing that this allowed them to take care of their families. This has led some sociologists to believe that the reason for lower economic activity amongst certain ethnic groups is due to cultural factors
• Research from NCSR (National Centre for Social Research) commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions sent around 3000 applications for 987 vaccines under false identities — the differences in the applications were the ethnic-sounding names

  the results were that applications that appeared to be white had to send 9 applications before receiving callbacks while applications with foreign-sounding names had to send 16 applications before having callbacks
• Which studies give reasons for why there are ethnic inequalities within work & employment?

  1. Barron & Norris - dual labour market
  2. NCSR - racism/ bias for British-sounding names
  3. Pilkington - "ethnic penalty"
  4. Bhopal - cultural explanation