Discrimination against young white males in hiring has become an open secret.
At a New York job fair on December 10, the unspoken reality was clear to everyone in media, academia, and entertainment. Many harbored doubts, yet few dared to voice them. Now that someone has spoken up, others pretend they never noticed—a situation that is, by any measure, astonishing.
What I refer to is a hiring bias that has developed over years in many institutions: prioritizing every group except white heterosexual men. As Jacob Savage compellingly argued in a recent article for *Compact*, this trend hits hardest one demographic—young white men—who haven’t had time to build the professional skills and experience that might offset their "disadvantage" in racial terms.
Citing data, Savage notes a dramatic decline in the hiring of white men for entry-level roles at elite institutions: their share of junior TV writing jobs dropped from 48% to 12%, while white male candidates for tenure-track humanities positions at Harvard fell from 39% to 18%. These shifts occurred within just a decade.
Some might argue this reflects demographic shifts among job seekers, but the numbers don’t support it. Demographic change doesn’t happen that fast. After the 1965 U.S. immigration reforms, it took 50 years for the white share of the population to decline from 84% to 62%. While younger generations are more diverse (since whites in 1965 remain white today), 2020 data shows white Americans still make up over half of new workforce entrants.
In 2022, young white men accounted for roughly a quarter of college graduates. By that measure, they should represent about a quarter of new hires in elite industries. The 12% figure for junior TV writers isn’t due to demographics or studios ending discrimination against other groups. Instead, employers are now discriminating against young white men to make their organizations "look more like America."
To understand the backlash against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), one must recognize how unfairly this policy’s logic treats educated millennial men—and how flawed that logic is.
For unclear reasons, people overestimate minority population shares, making newsrooms, Hollywood studios, and university faculties seem more disproportionately white than they are. Yes, workplace inequities exist: historically, Black applicants and women faced far lower hiring odds than white men, regardless of qualifications, and that legacy persists. But even without that context, these fields would skew white because most Americans born between the 1960s and 1980s were white.
This generational effect is often ignored because DEI discussions focus on college admissions, where diversity goals are easier to achieve: four years of balanced enrollment can make a school "look like America." But for large employers with workforces spanning 40 years, rebalancing demographics through "representative hiring" takes decades. DEI advocates, however, refuse to wait.
Thus, "correcting" past inequities has led to overcorrection. Too many white male executives? Hire more non-white, non-male newcomers to offset them. But trying to rebalance decades of hiring in just a few years inevitably slashes opportunities for young white men. This doesn’t mean they’re entirely excluded from fields like screenwriting or journalism, but their odds are now significantly lower in many industries.
Some may argue: So what? White men long benefited from discriminating against others—now the tables have turned, and that’s fair. Or, more diplomatically: Yes, it’s unfair, but addressing slavery and sexism’s legacy is hard, and imperfect solutions are inevitable. Drafting men born between 1914 and 1927 to fight Nazis was also unfair to them, but necessary to win the war.
This argument isn’t invalid, but no one states it outright. No one admits we’re punishing white men born in 1988 for hiring decisions made by a white man born in 1930 in 1985. Instead, critics dismiss complaints as coming from mediocre men who can’t admit their shortcomings or privileged ones who can’t handle fair competition. Sometimes, that’s true.
But it’s also undeniable that young white men, as a group, aren’t competing on a level field. They’re forced into a harder game with fewer rewards. Asking them to accept this for the greater good is one thing; mocking them for losing a rigged contest is another. If we choose the latter, we shouldn’t be surprised when they reject the rules—or the rulemakers.
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