UK Gender-Parent Hiring Discrimination across Skill Levels before, during, and after the COVID-19 Pandemic

We conducted a correspondence study to investigate patterns of UK gender-parent hiring discrimination across skill levels before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic as labor supply and demand fluctuated. To test hypotheses, we sent pairs of fictitious call center worker, assistant restaurant manager, and accountant applications in response to 2,262 UK employer job postings between August 2019 and December 2021. We find no hiring discrimination against mothers applying for call center or accounting positions as compared with childless women during any period, and some disadvantage for mothers applying for assistant restaurant manager positions only pre-lockdown. Among men, only low-skilled fathers were more likely to be called back than childless men before and after the lockdowns, with a significant decrease in their hiring advantage during the pandemic. These results firstly indicate that employers rely more on assumptions about group productivity when male applicants lack objective measures of productivity. The drop in callbacks during lockdowns further suggests low-skilled fathers’ dramatic increase in caregiving and housework negatively affected employers’ perceptions of their greater productivity.