(Knock, Knock) Knocking on the Glass Door: Socio-economic Inequalities in Access to High-Pay Careers

Catherine Dilnot, Colin Green (), Lindsey Macmillan () and Claire Tyler
Additional contact information
Catherine Dilnot: Oxford Brookes University
Colin Green: Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Lindsey Macmillan: University College London
Claire Tyler: University College London

No 19075, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: Access to professional jobs, particularly in large, high-wage firms, is a key determinant of career success for university graduates. Graduates from less advantaged backgrounds are less likely to gain access to these jobs. We use unique recruitment data from 17 large employers’ graduate intake programmes to explore why. While applicants from lower socio-economic and ethnic minority groups are well represented among the applicant pool, they disproportionately do not receive job offers, even when considering similar applicants. Large gaps appear at the blind pre-interview screening stage. We demonstrate that this is unlikely to reflect screen ing on expected productivity. This raises questions of bias in screening tests and the potential for shifts to the use of more automated hiring tools to exacerbate existing labour market inequalities.

Keywords: social mobility; inequalities; occupations; applications; job offers; ethnicity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 J15 J16 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-11
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp19075.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp19075

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark Fallak ().