General Xenophobia in the Labor Market: a correspondence test in Chicago∗

(First draft) The extent of racial discrimination on the labor market is now clearly identified. Its nature however largely remains an open question. This paper reports results from an experiment in which fabricated resumes are sent out to help-wanted advertisements in Chicago newspapers. We use three groups of identical resumes: one with Anglo-Saxon names, one with African-American names, and one with fictitious foreign names whose ethnic origin is unidentifiable to most Americans. We find that resumes with Anglo-Saxon names generate nearly one half more call-backs than identical resumes with African-American or Foreign names. Resumes with non-Anglo-Saxon names, whether African-American or Foreign, show no statistically significant difference in the number of callbacks they elicit. We take this as evidence that discrimination against specific groups is underlined by a general prejudice against members of the non-majority group – xenophobia. We also find that discrimination is significantly higher in the Chicago suburbs as opposed to the city proper