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Study finds (well, duh) racial bias in the advertising industry
January 14, 2009 by Ross Runkel at LawMemo
Probably no industry in the United States is free from racial bias. Yet a recent study indicates that the advertising industry really has a long way to go.
In NEW DATA EXPOSES DRAMATIC RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN U.S. ADVERTISING INDUSTRY the NAACP summarizes the whole story. [Read the full study]
Specific findings include:
Black college graduates working in advertising earn $.80 for every dollar earned by their equally-qualified White counterparts;Based on national demographic data, 9.6 percent of advertising managers and professionals should be African-Americans. The actual percentage in 2008 is 5.3 percent, representing a difference of 7,200 executive-level jobs;
About 16 percent of large advertising firms employ no black managers or professionals, a rate 60 percent higher than in the overall labor market;
Black managers and professionals in the industry are only one-tenth as likely as their White counterparts to earn $100,000 a year;
Blacks are only 62 percent as likely as their white counterparts to work in the powerful “creative” and “client contact” functions in advertising agencies;
Eliminating the industry’s current black-white employment gap would require tripling its Black managers and professionals.
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