Swimming Against the Tide: Literacy Dificulties and the Labour Market

Reports research on the vacancy‐filling process among UK employers for less skilled jobs, and identifies where and how people with literacy shortcomings lose out – based on a survey of 2,000 UK employers,and interviews with 30. Concludes that overt discrimination in hiring is uncommon. While some unskilled jobs do have a high literacy requirement,recruiters mostly tend to overestimate this requirement in selection,particularly if market conditions permit a wide choice of applicants.