David Reingold’s analysis of hiring patterns makes creative use of imperfect data to expand our understanding of inner-city employment. Reingold reports that employers in poor neighborhoods recruit more selectively, but these recruitment practices do not seem to influence how many local residents they hire. The author’s comment notes some technical concerns about Reingold’s analysis. She suspects that employers are excluding local applicants more then Reingold’s work suggests. Instead of resulting in a nonlocal workforce, these exclusionary practices may result in a very highly selected workforce of “acceptable” inner-city workers.
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