A national survey, commissioned by ethical AI hiring experts Applied and involving over 2,000 UK working adults, revealed that 37% of workers aged 25-34 and 36% of those aged 16-24 felt they had faced bias at some stage during recruitment. Overall, 22% of Brits reported experiencing bias in hiring at least once.

Younger workers, aged 16-24, identified the following top reasons for discrimination:

• Age (21%)
• Ethnicity (19%)
• Gender (15%)
• Weight (15%)
• Hair colour (15%)

For those aged 25-34, the reasons differed slightly, with accent bias emerging as the primary concern:

• Accent (21%)
• Ethnicity (21%)
• Gender (20%)
• Class (14%)
• Height (14%)

In addition, separate research showed that 36% of hiring managers admitted to holding biases against Gen Z candidates (born 1997-2012, currently aged 12-27).

These findings come amidst a shortage of qualified workers in London and the South East, where 63% of businesses reported challenges, according to the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) and the Open University.

Interestingly, older workers, particularly those aged 55 and above, were the least likely to report facing hiring bias, with only 12% claiming to have experienced discrimination. However, those who did report bias were twice as likely to attribute it to ageism. Among workers aged 55+, 50% who experienced discrimination cited age as the cause, compared to just 26% across all age groups.

When asked to anonymously share details of their experience, one respondent who was “looking for a job at 65 years old” said that they “have more chance of winning the lottery.”

In response to the findings, Khyati Sundaram, CEO of ethical AI hiring experts Applied, comments: “It’s deeply sad but wholly unsurprising that our research has found that more than a third of younger workers believe they have experienced discrimination during a hiring process. All humans hold biases, whether they’re conscious of them or not. Hiring managers are no exception. Traditional hiring practices are riddled with opportunities for these biases - around age, gender, race and much more – to influence our decisions. Workers are suffering the consequences and they are aware of it.

“Employers must focus on removing opportunities for biases to interfere in the hiring process. To do this, they should anonymise applications, assess candidates using skills tests, and only use trustworthy AI models which have been trained on bias-free data sets. This way, candidates are all given an equal opportunity to show they have what it takes to succeed in roles, and hiring managers can find the person with the best skills for the job – irrelevant details, like their age, don’t come into it.”