‘Better pay preserve of white males’

When people of colour in the US ask for pay raises, they are a lot less likely than white workers to get the salary bump, according to a study by PayScale, a firm that analyzes compensation data.

Women of colour – Asians, African-Americans, Hispanics and other nonwhite people – are 19% less likely than white men to get the raise they ask for, according to the survey of about 160 000 respondents. Non-white men were 25% more likely to be turned down for a salary increase.

“Everyone’s asking, but they’re getting different answers,” said Lydia Frank, PayScale’s vice-president of content strategy. “I think with the current climate in this country and the systemic racism that we’ve seen in other areas, I do not think it’s terribly surprising.”

In the US, white men make the most money of all ethnic groups, on average, with the exception of Asian men. Women of all racial and ethnic groups earn less than men of the same group, according to the Institute of Women’s Policy Research. Black women earn less than black men; and both earn less than white women and men.

Some of those discrepancies are linked to decisions on who gets hired for certain jobs, research shows. It’s a process that’s often tinged by bias, conscious or otherwise. Frank says the same dynamics are also at play when it comes to deciding who gets a raise and who doesn’t.

“Humans take shortcuts without even realising it,” she said. “There are things that happen in their brain – ‘hey I’ve seen somebody like this before and this is what I associate with somebody like this’.” In fact, asking for more money remains better than not asking – Reuters