The (in)visible hand: Do workers discriminate against employers?

Although a large literature has studied discrimination in the labor market, there is little evidence on sex- and race-based discrimination of workers against (potential) employers. We implement a randomized experiment in an online labor market to contribute to this gap in the literature. In our experiment, workers make labor-supply decisions after we randomly expose them to signals about the race and sex of the employer. Our empirical analysis provides fairly strong evidence that workers discriminate against black employers when making labor effort decisions. Race-based discrimination is driven primarily by white workers against black male employers. We find weaker and less conclusive evidence of a favorable sex gap toward female employers. An additional survey with randomized components suggests that perceived differences in the likelihood that an employer honors the labor contract does not differ by employer race or sex.