Types, Scope, and Differences of Employment Discrimination Faced by PhD Graduates: An Empirical Study Based on Data from the 2017 National Graduation Survey

Abstract The human resource allocation and efficient utilization of PhD graduates directly affects China’s macro strategy of building an innovative country with strong human resources. The existence of different forms of overt or hidden employment discrimination leads to “multiple losses of efficiency” on the national, organizational, and individual levels. This empirical study based on data from the 2017 National PhD Student Graduation Survey found that the main types of employment discrimination encountered by doctoral graduates in employment are first-degree discrimination, gender discrimination, age discrimination, regional discrimination, marital status discrimination, and other discrimination in descending order of incidence. And the incidence of multiple employment discrimination, i.e. encountering two or more types of discrimination at the same time, is 27.18%. In addition, there are differences in the incidence of the various types of employment discrimination between different genders, ages, selection methods, types of training units, academic disciplines, and regions. Further regression results show that the gender barrier effect, age barrier effect, and regional barrier effect in the employment of doctoral students are typical manifestations of employment discrimination.