Wages and employment of French workers with African origin

Our study focuses on the differences in wages and employment between French workers with French parents and French workers with at least one African parent, using the Formation Qualification Professionnelle survey (Insee, Paris, 2003). We introduce econometric decompositions, which allow us to reach conclusions when the potentially discriminated group is small. Then, we clarify the impact of discrimination at the hiring level in this context. We find that unexplained parts in the employment decompositions are much larger than in the wage decompositions. This suggests that, in France, labor market discrimination is more frequent at the hiring level than in the compensation process.