Data for: Hiring Discrimination Against Transgender People: Evidence from a Field Experiment

This paper presents the results of the first correspondence study that examined hiring discrimination against transgender people. Fictitious job applications (N = 2,224) were sent to employers with job postings in 12 low-skill occupations in Sweden. Overall, 40 percent of cisgender applicants received a positive employer response to their applications, while 34 percent of transgender applicants did. This result was not robust to the Heckman-Siegelman critique. However, when compared to the dominant gender in both male- and female-dominated occupations, estimates of discrimination were large and robust to the critique: Cisgender male applicants had an 83 percent relative advantage over transgender male and female applicants in male-dominated occupations and cisgender female applicants had a 53 percent relative advantage over transgender male and female applicants in female-dominated occupations. As no clear evidence of statistical discrimination was found, the observed differences between cisgender and transgender applicants can be attributed to taste-based discrimination.