Hiring Failures are a Failure for the Economy

LETTER RE: 'ELEGY FOR THE DEI BOOGEYMAN'

During the podcast discussion on the death of DEI programs, Kathryn mentioned how many people see the employment situation as zero-sum: If person A is getting a job they hadn't previously been able to get, there must be some person B who would have gotten the job otherwise. Person B is now worse off than they would have been prior to the implementation of a DEI program that helped person A get the job.

This imagining of the job market, and the economy generally, is a static one. The assumption is there are currently only so many jobs like this -- and there will only ever be that many jobs. Of course, that isn't true. National economies and the type of labor they are an aggregate of change all the time. The question is what role does a DEI program or something similar play in changing the U.S. economy? For me, a DEI program shouldn't simply have as its goal to equalize the chances of getting a job for people of the same or similar skills, but should also aim to help grow the economy.

I think of it in terms of a production possibility curve. If our economy is consistently underemploying qualified individuals because they are Black, female, gay, disabled, etc., then our economy is not operating at the edge of the production possibility curve. We have resources, in the form of labor, that are not being fully utilized.

In my imagination, the end result of DEI is that both person A and person B end up with jobs and salaries fitting their skills and experience rather than only one. We wouldn't be replacing the white person B with minority person A. We instead get to benefit from both working at their greatest potential. Doing this across the labor market should generate expansionary forces through greater productivity on the firms' side while also raising wages of those previously underemployed.

Grant Christopher
Sylva, North Carolina
April 16, 2025