What roles do gender and race play in the IT job market?

An analysis of over 5,300 IT job seekers over the last decade shows that race and gender do influence the entry-level IT job market.

As researchers working on the Information Systems Job Index which is published by Temple University’s Institute for Business and Information Technology, we found a systematic pattern of advantages and disadvantages using the theory of intersectionality. (Oxford calls intersectionality the “interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.”)

Data from the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission shows that white and Asian men are overrepresented in IT. To study intersectionality, we compared the experiences of groups historically underrepresented in IT. African American Men and Women, Hispanic Men and Women, Asian Women and White Women were compared to White Men and Asian Men.

The results show a variety of distinct effects in the IT labor market, with one general finding suggesting that pursuing a graduate degree does help underrepresented groups in some ways, but not others, relative to the comparison groups.

African American men

Overall, our evidence suggests that the IT job market is harshest on African American men, who experienced significantly lower rates of receiving job offers after being interviewed compared to White men and Asian men. This effect did not hold for any other underrepresented group and does suggest that there may be systemic bias at work here as, all else equal, African American men were offered jobs at the lowest rate after interviewing for an IT job. We did not find any effects regarding the added effects of graduate education for African American men — either positive or negative relative to the reference groups.

African American women

For African American women, the added effect of graduate education improved the rate at which they received job interviews for IT jobs relative to Asian men and White men. In other words, the added “payoff” of a graduate education in terms of getting IT job interviews was higher for African American women. However, this did not automatically translate into more job offers, as the effect of graduate education on receiving job offers was significantly lower than it was for White men.

Asian women

For Asian women, it appears that graduate education significantly improved their sense of confidence regarding finding IT work, as this was significantly higher than both Asian men and White men. However, as with African American women, the added effect of graduate education did not pay off in terms of job offers as here it was also a significantly lower effect relative to White men. In other words, for White men the impact of graduate education on receiving job offers was better than it was for both African American women and Asian women.

Hispanic men

For Hispanic men, we did not find that there were many discrepant experiences relative to Asian men and White men. At least in terms of finding IT work, we did not find much evidence that the process worked out significantly differently. One effect demonstrated, though, was that graduate education did have a higher impact on receiving job offers for Hispanic men relative to Asian men.

Hispanic women

For Hispanic women, our numbers show that they converted interviews to offers at a significantly higher rate than did White men or Asian men. In fact, Hispanic women had the highest rate of receiving job offers after their interview of any group in the sample. However, this advantage might be offset by the fact that Hispanic women reported the lowest salaries in our sample — which seems to indicate there might be something more complex at work here.

White women

Finally, for White women, this group derived more confidence from graduate degrees relative to White men and more confidence from their sense of IT skills relative to Asian men. Further, graduate education did have a more positive effect on receiving job offers than it did for Asian men. Overall, graduate education and IT skills seemed to have broadly positive outcomes here.

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The study is based on data collected by the Information Systems Job Index. The IS Job Index led by Temple University’s Institute for Business and Information Technology is the only longitudinal assessment of placement, demographics, jobs, search, acceptance, geographical patterns, and knowledge of information systems, management information systems, and computer information systems graduates. Inaugurated in 2013 and published every two years, each report is based on several thousand recent graduates from universities across the United States. For more information, see isjobindex.com.