People with disabilities have lower labour force participation rates, employment rates and wages than the workforce as a whole. A major barrier to the employment and continued employment of people with disabilities is discrimination against them in the labour market. In Canada, as in France, disability is the leading ground for discrimination complaints, and employment is the primary area in which such discrimination occurs (Canadian Human Rights Commission, 2015; Défenseur des Droits, 2022).
This paper presents the results of testing carried out in Quebec. This experiment measures discrimination in the labour market against people in wheelchairs and assesses the effectiveness of video CVs as a recruitment tool.
Discrimination against wheelchair users in Quebec
This study analyses discrimination against wheelchair users in the workplace, and the role of video CVs as a recruitment tool.
Reference IPP Policy Brief No. 98
Presentation
Key Results
- 3,500 applications (CVs, cover letters and, in some cases, video CVs) were submitted in response to job offers for secretaries/receptionists, IT programmers and bookkeeping assistants. Some applications mentioned that the applicant used a wheelchair.
- Disclosing that one uses a wheelchair in a CV halves the chances of being invited to a job interview.
- Including a video CV, which sends a positive signal to the employer, increases the rate of interview invitations by the same margin for both disabled and non-disabled applicants (by more than 10 percentage points). This suggests that discrimination is not influenced by indicators of quality.
- Analysis of video viewing behaviour suggests that employers seek less information when the candidate has a disability. Disclosing the disability later in the video increases viewing time, but does not affect the rate at which candidates are invited to an interview.
Method and Data
The Testing method was used: this involves creating fictitious applications, the content of which is similar except for the mention of a wheelchair, and sending them in response to genuine job offers. 3,500 applications were sent.
Charles Bellemare
Marion Goussé
Guy Lacroix
Steeve Marchand