Indigenous workers in Canada experience higher unemployment rates and lower rates of labour market participation than non-Indigenous workers. Policy discussions about closing this gap have often highlighted education, training and skills development as important pathways to employment.
But what happens when people acquire the necessary qualifications, submit applications and still don’t receive a response?
Our new research on hiring practices in the food services industry suggests that improving access to skills and education alone doesn’t fully address employment disparities. Instead, we must also consider what happens after people acquire these qualifications: how employers evaluate, select and ultimately reject or advance job applicants.
Our findings reveal that Indigenous job seekers can face barriers at the very point of entry into the workforce, where decisions are shaped not only by qualifications and experience but also by perceptions of identity and workplace fit.
Discrimination in the hiring process
Public debates about Canada’s labour market often focus on labour supply: migrant worker programs, immigration and the challenges facing young workers. Less attention is paid to the experiences of Indigenous people seeking employment.
To examine these experiences, we conducted a large-scale resumé audit study of employer hiring preferences in the food services sector. We submitted more than 6,000 fictitious but realistic resumés to actual job postings for servers, hosts and bartenders in Ontario and Saskatchewan.
Each resumé contained equivalent levels of education, work experience, certifications and availability. The resumés differed only in signals of identity, including names, gender, citizenship status and indicators of ethnicity or Indigenous identity.
To signal an Indigenous background, some resumés included volunteer experience with Indigenous community organizations, fluency in an Indigenous language or credentials from an Indigenous college or university. These were compared against resumés representing other common groups in the food service workforce: white Canadian-born, Canadian-born Filipino and Filipino permanent resident applicants.
Restaurant industry groups have consistently pointed to a labour shortage as the reason so many positions go unfilled. But in our study, employers responded to only 11.4 per cent of applications.
The low callback rate suggests that employers’ difficulties filling positions cannot be explained solely by a shortage of available workers; hiring practices also influence who receives opportunities.
More importantly, the findings revealed unequal treatment. Indigenous applicants received callbacks at a lower rate than non-Indigenous applicants: 9.9 per cent compared with 11.9 per cent.
Regional differences and bias
The patterns varied significantly by region. In Ontario, callback rates for Indigenous and non-Indigenous applicants were nearly identical. In Saskatchewan, however, the gap was much larger: non-Indigenous applicants received callbacks 13.2 per cent of the time, compared with 8.1 per cent for Indigenous applicants.
To better understand these differences, we conducted interviews with hiring managers and workers in both provinces. These interviews suggested that hiring decisions involved more than formal qualifications and experience.
Instead, it was governed by an unwritten standard of “fit” — one shaped by racialized and gendered expectations about who represents an ideal hospitality worker.
Our quantitative findings showed that Indigenous women received more callbacks than Indigenous men (11.6 per cent compared with 8.3 per cent), reflecting broader patterns in hospitality hiring in which women are perceived as being especially suited to customer-facing roles.
However, this apparent advantage does not necessarily represent greater equality. Our interviews showed that women workers were expected to be “Instagram ready” and were often sexualized. Women in the food service industry also earn less than their male counterparts, and are less likely to land managerial roles.
For Indigenous applicants, these expectations collide with longstanding racial stereotypes. Hiring managers and workers described biases associating Indigenous people with social issues such as poverty and addiction. These assumptions, shaped by broader patterns of anti-Indigenous racism, can influence how employers interpret applicants before they have any opportunity to demonstrate their skills.
Addressing structural barriers
Conventional economic theories, namely labour market segmentation theory, suggest that marginalized groups are funnelled into lower-paid precarious jobs because they lack paths to corporate careers.
But our research shows that Indigenous workers can face exclusion even from entry-level positions. Because early jobs provide opportunities to gain experience, build professional networks and establish pathways for future employment, barriers at this stage can have long-term consequences.
When policymakers examine Indigenous employment disparities, they must recognize that the Canadian labour market doesn’t provide equal opportunities for all workers. Education and experience matter, but they do not operate independently from the social and institutional factors that shape hiring decisions.
If Canada is committed to advancing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action No. 92 on economic reconciliation, employment gaps cannot continue to be framed primarily as failures of education, training or individual effort.
Addressing these disparities requires confronting the structural barriers and racialized assumptions that continue to influence marginalized people’s access to work.
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