Do equal employment opportunity statements encourage racial minorities? evidence from a large natural field experiment

Abstract

Labor force composition and the allocation of talent remain of vital import to organizations. For their part, governments and companies around the globe have implemented equal employment opportunity (EEO) regulations to influence labor market flows. Even though such regulations are pervasive, surprisingly little is known about their impacts. We use a natural field experiment conducted across 10 U.S. cities to investigate if EEO statements affect the first step in the employment process, application rates. Making use of data from over 2,000 job seekers, we find that the presence of an EEO statement in job advertisements does not encourage racial minorities’ willingness to apply for jobs. Our results highlight that if one goal of EEO regulations is to enhance the pool of minority applicants, then it is not working as we also observe discouragement effects in some cities.