Fair Cities: Employer-led Efforts That Produce Results for Ethnic Minorities

On average, ethnic minorities in the United Kingdom experience higher unemployment, lower pay, and fewer opportunities for advancement than whites. At the same time, half of the growth in the working-age population over the next five years will come from ethnic minority groups even though they make up only 8 percent of the U.K. population. Thus, failure to address the employment barriers that ethnic minorities face will have severe economic and social costs. Through Fair Cities, the National Employment Panel, which provides advice on the design, delivery, and performance of the U.K. government’s labor market policies and programs, is exploring ways to engage employers in addressing this challenge.

To inform Fair Cities, JFF undertook an international study of employer-led initiatives that take full account of the recruitment and skill needs of employers while helping ethnic minority job seekers to overcome specific barriers, such as language skills and discrimination. Fair Cities: Employer-led Efforts that Produce Results for Ethnic Minorities identifies key issues for policymakers who wish to promote promising local initiatives. The report includes case studies of a range of initiatives from the UK, the United States, Canada, The Netherlands, and Germany.