Jobs, the ‘ethnic penalty' and the answers we never get when we're turned down

Two youngsters looking for work tell David Cohen about their struggles and the ‘hidden barrier’ in interviews

WHEN Gopal Singh applied for a job as a hotel receptionist last month, the interviewer asked him a question that put him on edge: “How do I know if I give you the job that you won’t go back to your home country within six months?”

For Gopal, who had emigrated from India to the UK as a young child, this was a case of racial discrimination. It was the 61st job he had applied for since being let go as a night porter at the start of the pandemic and it made him wonder what part racism had played in his failure to land a job.

Gopal’s story stood out because it was an example of blatant racial discrimination — usually, bias is rarely able to be identified as the reason for the failure to get hired.

Almost all the jobless black and Asian youths we spoke to as part of our joint Evening Standard and Independent investigation into unemployment could never be sure of the reason they had been unable to land a job.

A 2019 study by the Centre for Social Investigation at Oxford University’s Nuffield College revealed that ethnic minority applicants have to send 60 per cent more applications to get a posit ive response from employers compared to their white counterparts.

Other curriculum vitae studies have shown that the “ethnic penalty” may be even higher.

But whether the racism is overt, hidden or masquerades as unconscious bias, the fact is that over 37 per cent of economically active black Londoners aged 16-24 are jobless, compared to the average rate of 11.7 per cent of youth countrywide.