Hiring Discrimination Against Transgender People: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Abstract

This paper presents the results of the first correspondence study that examined hiring discrimination against transgender people. Fictitious job applications (N = 2,224) were sent to employers with job postings in 12 low-skill occupations in Sweden. Overall, 40 percent of cisgender applicants and 34 percent of transgender applicants received a positive employer response to their applications. This result was not robust to the Heckman-Siegelman critique. However, when transgender applicants were compared to the dominant gender in male- and female-dominated occupations, estimates of discrimination were larger and robust to the critique. There was no clear support for the statistical discrimination hypothesis.