Unemployment and hidden biases

“The world is unfair” is a common lesson that parents try to teach their
children. Divulging away from the commonly preached macroeconomic
issues that we talk about, we’re talking about a statistic that is often
overlooked as being unimportant and not commonly talked about,
‘Unemployment’. There is a general preference that the broadcasters who
show the merry truth about the economy and making everyone feel good
about their decisions are the most watched. That is not so true about social
growth and overall upliftment.
Taking a dive into behavioral psychology, we quickly realize that humans
have deep-rooted biases about every possible criteria imaginable.
However, there is increased reluctance to come out and openly divulge
them due to increased social sensitivity and perceived “acceptance”. There
is a strong correlation between the biases of the employer and the chance
of getting a job. These biases may be based on something as superficial as a
name or something as deep -rooted as skin color. Over the years, a series of
“audit studies” have tried to measure how people perceive different names.
In a typical audit study, a researcher would send two identical (and fake)
résumés, one with a traditionally white name and the other with an
immigrant or minority-sounding name, to potential employers. The “white”
résumés have always gleaned more job interviews.
This data might not be correlated with Indian employers because of the
lack of difference in skin color. However, there might as well be a
correspondence between the widely practiced caste system in the country
and the prevalent prejudices and preferences towards a few particular
ones.
These factors however, may also be influenced by the employee’s skills.
These studies further exemplify the fact that economics is a social science
and is strongly correlated with human behavior, thus other social sciences
like Psychology majorly influence outcomes and it is never a smart idea to
exclusively rely on data derived from economic studies.