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ResumeBuilders commissioned a survey of antisemitic attitudes of hiring managers and recruiters in the United States, and the results show that discrimination against Jews in the workplace is far more widespread than has been reported.
Nearly one third of the respondents, 32%, said antisemitism is “common” or “very common” at their workplaces.
Over a quarter of them, 26%, say they are less likely to move forward in the hiring process with Jewish applicants.
23% say they want fewer Jews in their industry, and an astounding 17% say that their leadership has told them to not hire Jews.
The recruiters and hiring managers make assumptions on who is Jewish based on the applicant’s educational background (35%), last name (33%), past or current experiences with Jewish organizations (28%), and even their appearance (26%). But some also make their assumptions based on antisemitic criteria, saying their assumptions are based on the job applicant’s “voice,” “mannerisms,” or even saying “they are very frugal.”
When asked the reasons for not wanting to hire Jews, the answers were a summary of why people are antisemitic altogether. They included “Jews have too much power and control” (38%), “Jews claim to be the ‘chosen people’” (38%), and “Jews have too much wealth” (35%).
Is this discrimination coming from the political Right or the Left? The reasons given above seem to indicate it is the former, but that is not necessarily so.
The report notes that antisemitism is worse in industries that tend to be more politically liberal and that people traditionally associated with Jews. 48% of hiring managers in both education and entertainment say antisemitism is common at their workplace, while 45% of hiring managers in business say antisemitism is acceptable in their workplace.
Moreover, Resumebuilder has had other surveys done recently of recruiters and hiring managers, and the results showed that they tend to lean left.
More than one-third of hiring managers are more likely to interview applicants who list their pronouns in their resumes. Additionally, 52% believe their company practices “reverse discrimination” in hiring; 1 in 6 have been asked to deprioritize hiring white men and 48% have been asked to prioritize diversity over qualifications.
It may be that the combination of companies demanding a more diverse environment and hiring managers’ latent antisemitic attitudes work together to provide a perfect storm against hiring Jews, with diversity being used as a way for the managers to justify their antisemitic practices.
For comparison, studies show less than 10% bias against applicants who appear to be Black. Those results garner major headlines.
It is unclear what the geographic scope of the survey was. Resumebuilder itself is geared towards jobs in the United States. (I requested more data.)
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Young hiring managers far less likely to hire Jews than older ones
On Friday, I looked at a survey from Resumebuilders that showed that 26% of recruiters and hiring managers in the United States were less likely to hire people they assume to be Jewish.
As shocking as this is, it gets worse.
I asked for the raw data of the survey to see if I can see any patterns of the respondents. One of them stuck out as the biggest factor as to whether the hiring manager would discriminate against Jews.
Their age.
Younger hiring managers were twice as likely to be biased against Jewish applicants than older ones.
Why would hiring managers be any different than the general population? If they aren’t, that means that antisemitism is getting continuously worse in America in coming decades. And the total number of those surveyed was over 1000, which should be pretty accurate.
Another very disturbing finding is that nearly 38% of the hiring managers with a post-graduate education were less likely to move forward with Jewish applicants, with a similar percentage feeling that there were too many Jews in their industries. And nearly 37% of Black hiring managers were less likely to move forward with Jewish applicants. (Although the sample size was small, Arab hiring managers were the least likely to not move forward with Jews – only 7%.)
The other major correlation was between certain industries and antisemitism. According to the survey, these industries that had over 70 respondents were most likely to reject Jewish applicants:
Business 37%
Finance 37%
Education 29%
Technology 28%
These are fields that one would expect to be among the most “liberal.” Blue collar fields like retail and food had fewer antisemitic attitudes by hiring managers (although 20% is still nothing to ignore.)
It is hard to escape the conclusion that we are losing the fight against antisemitism, badly. If we expected that education is an inoculation against antisemitism, we are seeing the opposite.
And given that surveys are showing that young people are less likely to be pro-Israel it is also hard to escape the conclusion that today’s anti-Zionism – especially on campus – is directly contributing to today’s antisemitism.
{Both articles are reposted from the EoZ blog}
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