From the New York Times:



Excerpted from the article, regarding the hiring end of the employment equation:

The discrimination is rarely overt, according to interviews with more than two dozen college-educated black job seekers around the country, many of them out of work for months. Instead, those interviewed told subtler stories, referring to surprised looks and offhand comments, interviews that fell apart almost as soon as they began, and the sudden loss of interest from companies after meetings.

Whether or not each case actually involved bias, the possibility has furnished an additional agonizing layer of second-guessing for many as their job searches have dragged on.

A follow-up article deals with the issues surrounding resumes specifically, called "Whitening" the Resume. This is all reminiscent of a study done back in 2004, called Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?, which found that identical resumes sent with "white sounding" names were a full fifty percent more likely to receive a callback for an interview than those with "black sounding" names.

Most of the data in the Times articles comes from Friday's report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.