‘Marginalized groups simply cannot educate their way out of poverty and underemployment when such obstacles persist,' say McMaster researchers
A new McMaster University study shows Indigenous applicants receive fewer callbacks than any other group of job seekers in Canada's food services industry, even when résumés show identical education and experience.
“We know that Indigenous people in Canada already endure endemic unemployment and poor labour market participation rates because of disparities in access to education. But what we now know based on the study is that their poor employment outcomes are also due to bias and discrimination,” said Catherine Connelly, director of the McMaster Centre for Research on Employment and Work, and a professor in organizational behaviour at DeGroote School of Business.
Researchers led Connelly built eight fictitious résumés representing applicants of different racial backgrounds and submitted them to hundreds of front-of-house restaurant postings in Ontario and Saskatchewan, The Globe and Mail reported.
Applications went out in the Greater Toronto Area in 2019 and 2022, and in Regina in 2022, submitted in random order and close succession to keep conditions consistent across candidates, per the report.
"Employers responded to very few applications – 11.4% across all samples – despite strong résumé attributes, contradicting claims by industry leaders in this period that migrants were required to fill food service vacancies," the study's authors wrote, as cited by The Globe and Mail.
Within that limited pool of responses, Indigenous applicants received a 9.9% callback rate compared with 11.9% for non-Indigenous applicants, a gap that widened in Saskatchewan to 8.1% versus 13.2%. Indigenous men received fewer callbacks than Indigenous women.
The majority of Indigenous workers have experienced discrimination in their current workplace, according to a previous report.
Bias documented in employer interviews
Beyond the résumé audit, researchers interviewed employers, hiring managers and workers to understand the reasoning behind hiring decisions, according to the report.
One Toronto-based hiring manager described a homeless encampment in the city as "90% Indigenous, and all they do is drink alcohol and smoke crack cocaine," citing this view as his reason for not considering an Indigenous candidate, the Globe and Mail article stated. A Saskatchewan restaurant worker separately said Indigenous staff hired as servers were gradually replaced with white employees.
"We know that Indigenous people in Canada already endure endemic unemployment and poor labour market participation rates because of disparities in access to education. But what we now know based on the study is that their poor employment outcomes are also due to bias and discrimination," said Prof. Connelly, who also holds an appointment as a professor of organizational behaviour at DeGroote School of Business, according to the report.
Prof. Connelly said the sector was chosen because it "relies heavily on foreign workers and faces perennial labour shortage issues," meaning job openings should, in theory, be widely accessible.
Labour market context
Statistics Canada data obtained by the researchers showed employment of Indigenous people in food services grew 6% since 2020, compared with 16% for non-Indigenous workers, even as Indigenous unemployment stood at 10.2% at the end of 2025 versus 6.8% for non-Indigenous workers.
The study's authors concluded that credentials and experience were insufficient to overcome the bias documented in their findings, writing that "marginalized groups simply cannot educate their way out of poverty and underemployment when such obstacles persist."
The research is expected to be published later this year in the journal Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, according to The Globe and Mail.
Marginalized groups are still viewed poorly by hiring managers in the food service industry, according to a previous report.
