Ethnic Laws And Ethnic Penalty - 2115 Words

It is a well-established fact that ethnic penalty in labor markets exists in many countries across the world. This ethnic discrimination in employment typically operates furtively, with the victims often not recognizing it. The existence of ethnic penalty is commonly demonstrated in statistical patterns and trends over time before being proven by specific research studies and targeted investigations. Ethnic penalty basically describe poorer results for ethnic or racial minority groups in far as the rates of employment, rates of pay, and the job levels attained by individual employees are concerned (Platt, 2002, p. 118). Thus, they are a reflection of labor market inequalities between various ethnic groups as well as between various areas,†¦show more content†¦The basic meaning of an ethnic penalty is the myriad disadvantages experienced by ethnic minority groups in the labor market in comparison to non-ethnic minorities of equal human capital. As already noted, this is expre ssed in terms of poorer results for the minority groups in far as the rates of employment, rates of pay, and the job levels attained by individual employees (Platt, 2002, p. 118). Hopkins offers a similar definition, noting that ethnic penalty represent the differences observed between the employment outcomes for ethnic minorities and their non-minority counterparts based on the human capital of each group. In a well-functioning or fair labor market, variations in individuals’ employment success are generally considered to arise from the â€Å"human capital† differences of the individuals, that is, their skills as well as knowledge pertinent to the specific labor market. Contrastingly, unfair labor markets may be characterized by ethnic penalty, which depict such factors as groups’ cultural attributes that impact their labor market performance, systematic variances in the economic prospects in the areas in which various ethnic groups reside, or racial discrimina tion (Hopkins Gale, 2009, p. 38). However, Triandafyllidou cautions that the ethnic penalties that statistical studies identify are not always indicators of the existence of ethnic discrimination. There is a constant possibility that the observed