Inequality in startup hiring

Abstract

Startups are increasingly central to job creation, innovation, and economic mobility, yet research on hiring inequality focuses predominantly on established firms and founders, overlooking the non-founder workforce. We develop a comprehensive framework for understanding how startup hiring practices affect labor market inequality. We propose that startups differ from mature firms in ways that make their hiring dynamics uniquely consequential for inclusion and exclusion. Integrating demand-side perspectives, we advance a four-part analytical framework organized around why, when, how, and who startups hire. We discuss how hiring motivations, timing, and methods interact to determine workforce composition, producing recursive effects that affect long-term diversity trajectories. Finally, we outline a research agenda highlighting the temporal, organizational, and contextual contingencies of startup hiring. By shifting attention from founders to employees and from supply-side to demand-side processes, this framework reconceptualizes startups as pivotal institutions in the reproduction and potential mitigation of inequality. It reveals how the architecture of opportunity in emerging ventures impacts the broader distribution of work and wealth