Measuring racial bias in employment services in Colombia

Suzanne Duryea, Jaime Millán-Quijano, Judith Morrison and Yanira Oviedo

Journal of Development Economics, 2025, vol. 174, issue C

Abstract: In this paper, we document de facto, implicit, and explicit racial biases within the public employment service in Colombia. By combining administrative data about job seekers and job openings with direct surveys to job counselors, including a Race Implicit Association Test, we measure different types of racial bias. We find that while job counselors do not self-report biased attitudes against Afro-descendant individuals, the majority exhibit high levels of implicit bias, which also correlates strongly with observed lower referral rates of Afro-descendants to job openings. In addition, we provide information to a randomized group of job counselors about their implicit bias and test if this information changes their referral behavior. While we demonstrate that the implicit bias of counselors contributes to racial gaps in labor outcomes, we do not find that providing feedback on this unconscious bias changes referral behavior.

Keywords: Implicit stereotypes; Labor market discrimination; Developing countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J21 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Working Paper: Measuring Racial Bias in Employment Services in Colombia (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:174:y:2025:i:c:s0304387824001846

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2024.103435

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