Roofing Jobs: How Degree Requirements Cap Access to High-Wage Employment

Degree requirements remain common in job postings despite growing evidence that they may screen out qualified non-degree holders and contribute to labor market stratification that limits socioeconomic mobility. This project uses a two-stage field experiment to examine how hiring language shapes both candidate self-selection and employer evaluation, testing whether degree requirements generate inefficient sorting in terms of demographic characteristics (education, gender, and race) and skill match. Partnering with an organization, Oseguera will randomly assign job seekers to receive postings with varying degree requirements (degree required, no degree requirement, or skill-based hiring emphasis) for identical positions. This will reveal how hiring language causally affects application rates and applicant-pool composition. In Stage 2, she will randomly assign recruiters to evaluate candidates under conditions that separately identify the effects of (i) job framing and (ii) applicant-pool characteristics on perceived candidate quality. By comparing evaluations across conditions, she will obtain an exogenous measure of candidate skill quality, which I will use to assess candidates' skill match in Stage 1. Together, these two stages will reveal the equilibrium dynamics of degree-based hiring: how requirements simultaneously shape who applies and how employers evaluate those who do. The results will provide causal evidence on whether stated degree requirements expand or constrain labor market opportunities for qualified non-degree holders, directly informing policy debates about skill-based hiring practices and organizational strategies to improve hiring equity.