Unemployment Among Britain’s Ethnic Minorities

Using a sample of over 100,000 males from the Labour Force Survey, we explore the employment prospects of different ethnic groups. There are significant differences across groups so that discrimination studies which consider ethnic minorities as one homogeneous group involve a large degree of approximation. We pay particular attention to the considerable differences between the Indian and Pakistani/Bangladeshi groups. We argue that the differences are not the result of different levels of discrimination by the white majority; rather the predominately Muslim Pakistani/Bangladeshi community is less assimilated compared with other ethnic minority groups.