Does additional work experience moderate ethnic discrimination in the labour market?

Based on employer responses to 6000 job applications, this article tests whether greater work experience lowers discrimination against job applicants of immigrant origin in the Finnish labour market. It does so by comparing the callbacks received in response to two sets of job applications: applications in which applicants of immigrant background had identical work experience as the majority applicant and those in which they had two years? more experience than the majority candidate. The article further investigates if additional experience elicits more callbacks in jobs in which higher work experience and a vocational diploma are required and when the vacancies are high-skilled. The findings of this empirical investigation suggest the presence of deep-seated ethnic hierarchies in the Finnish labour market. They clearly demonstrate that immigrants? chances of securing a job interview offer do not significantly change even when they possess substantially greater work experience than their majority counterparts.Peer reviewe

Ethnic discrimination against second-generation immigrants in hiring : empirical evidence from a correspondence test

This article presents the findings of a field experiment on ethnic discrimination against second-generation immigrants in the Finnish labour market. Five job applicants of Finnish, English, Iraqi, Russian and Somali origin sent equivalent job applications to each of 1000 publicly advertised vacancies. They all had identical qualifications, but differed in one respect, that is, their name. The findings strongly suggest the existence of ethnic hierarchical orderings in the labour market. They reflect that locally gained human capital not only does not equalise employment opportunities for immigrants as such but also rewards them differentially based on their origin, with non-European applicants being the least preferred choices. The findings also reveal that discrimination did not only manifest itself in low callback rates for immigrants but also the order in which employers contacted the different applicants. In a further set of 200 job openings tested in which applicants of immigrant origin had two years more experience than the Finnish candidate, the systematic differences in patterns of callback rates remained the same. Drawing on empirical observations, the article suggests that ethnic hierarches prevailing in society can also extend to the realm of labour markets resulting in unequal employment chances for otherwise equal job applicants.Peer reviewe

Do Equal Qualifications Yield Equal Rewards for Immigrants in the Labour Market?

Using a correspondence field experiment, the study reported in this article has investigated if immigrant job applicants with equivalent qualifications are treated differently in the Finnish labour market. The study consists of 5000 job applications that were sent out to 1000 advertised positions by five applicants of Finnish, English, Iraqi, Russian and Somali backgrounds, who differed only in their names. The findings show that applicants of immigrant origin receive significantly fewer invitations for a job interview than the native candidate, even if they possess identical language proficiency, education and vocational diplomas. However, the extent of discrimination is not equally distributed among the immigrant groups. Rather, job applicants from non-European backgrounds seem to suffer a significantly greater labour-market penalty. The findings clearly suggest that, despite anti-discrimination legislation and measures aimed at promoting equal employment opportunities, discrimination continues to remain a serious barrier to immigrants' labour-market integration in a Nordic welfare society.Peer reviewe

Does the size of foreign population in a city affect the level of labour-market discrimination against job applicants of migrant origin?

Based on a correspondence experiment, this article examines if the size of population of foreign background in a city exerts any significant effect on the extent of labour-market discrimination faced by job applicants of migrant origin. The study results find neither any statistically significant relationship between the two, nor do they lend support to the group threat and group contact conceptual frameworks. Rather, they appear to corroborate the pure discrimination model, as discrimination seems to be uniformly spread over all cities and all types of jobs with different characteristics. However, the findings of this study do not exclude the possibility that there could be a threshold value in the share of foreign population after which the picture of discrimination would become richer in nuances and some of the theories would gain more explanatory power.Peer reviewe

More on Comparison Between First Geometric-Arithmetic Index and Atom-Bond Connectivity Index

The first geometric-arithmetic (GA) index and atom-bond connectivity (ABC) index are molecular structure descriptors which play a significant role in quantitative structure-property relationship (QSPR) and quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) studies. Das and Trinajsti\'{c} [\textit{Chem. Phys. Lett.} \textbf{497} (2010) 149-151] showed that $GA$ index is greater than $ABC$ index for all those graphs (except $K_{1,4}$ and $T^{*}$, see Figure 1) in which the difference between maximum and minimum degree is less than or equal to 3. In this note, it is proved that $GA$ index is greater than $ABC$ index for line graphs of molecular graphs, for general graphs in which the difference between maximum and minimum degree is less than or equal to $(2\delta-1)^{2}$ (where $\delta$ is the minimum degree and $\delta\geq2$) and for some families of trees. Thereby, a partial solution to an open problem proposed by Das and Trinajsti\'{c} is given.Comment: 10 pages, 2 tables, 1 figure, revised versio