Obama will preside over America’s greatest increase in employment discrimination?

When Americans elected someone who identifies himself as “black” as president, folks said that this might usher in a new era of open minds and tolerance. I’m wondering if, ironically, Obama will end up presiding over the greatest increase in employment discrimination that the country has ever seen.

I’ve started six companies and had the good fortune to operate most of them during the prosperous period 1985-2006. I hired whites and blacks. I hired women and men. I hired 18-year-olds and 55-year-olds. I hired Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and Christians. In addition to Americans, I hired people from Pakistan, India, China, Germany, England, Canada, Australia, Japan, Croatia, South America, and various parts of the former Soviet Union. Was I trying to make a statement about diversity? No. I was trying to stay in business. We had growing demand from customers and, thanks to the strong economy, there weren’t many qualified applicants for the jobs that I offered. I felt lucky whenever I could find someone whom I was enthusiastic about hiring.

This article (dated from some time in 2009 according to the text) says that, due to the 25 million Americans who are unemployed or underemployed, there are typically 200 applicants for every job opening in the U.S. If we assume that 15 of those 200 are pretty well qualified, that leaves an ample opportunity for personal prejudice to operate. If an employer does not like workers of a particular race, he need not hire any and won’t face any financial consequence. More realistically, if any employer is prejudiced against older workers, who are rendered less attractive by government mandates to provide them with ruinously expensive health insurance, he or she can hire a workforce of twentysomethings.

In Obama’s speech he noted that “My administration has a Civil Rights Division that is once again prosecuting … employment discrimination”. I think this makes sense. In a healthy classical free market economy, there would be almost no involuntary unemployment and a firm practicing discrimination would risk being overtaken by competitors. In a moribund planned economy, however, there is ample opportunity for cost-free employment discrimination and only a larger government can discourage it (though the Framers might ask why this isn’t a job for the 50 states; see The Dirty Dozen).

As government tends not to be perfectly efficient, my prediction is that Obama has a good chance of presiding over a massive expansion of employment discrimination in America. I expect this to fall hardest on older workers.