Discrimination against young Jewish accountants is so great that it is almost impossible for them to get jobs except in accounting firms managed by Jews, it is charged by Dr. Mar F. Baer, national director of the B’nai B’rith Service Bureau.
The charge is based upon a survey conducted by the Bureau among 2,120 graduates of 94 accounting schools in 1946 and 1947 classes. The results of the survey will be published in the forthcoming December issue of the National Jewish Monthly, B’nai B’rith publication.
Dr. Baer says that the survey revealed 95 percent of the Jews in those classes who are today employed by firms hiring accountants, work for firms with all or partial Jewish management. Eighty percent work for firms of all-Jewish management; 15 for firms of “mixed” management; and only five percent for non-Jewish firms.
Moreover, the survey shows, Jewish accounting graduates tend to earn about 10 percent less than their non-Jewish classmates, at least at the outest of their careers. Dr. Baer accounts for this in three ways: young Jewish accountants are concentrated in large cities, where competition is keenest; they tend to work for smaller firms, whose income is lower; and they are engaged for the most part in lower-paying types of accounting work.
Dr. Baer found that if young Jewish accountants would move to the smaller communities, they would probably earn larger incomes. “Accounting graduates in New York City,” he wrote, “showed the lowest median income of any section of the country. The South and Midwest were close to the top figure.” The Jewish graduates reported they had much greater difficulty getting their jobs than the non-Jews had.
“Until recently,” Dr. Baer concludes, “the B’nai B’rith Vocational Service Bureau expected a gloomy outlook for Jewish graduates of accountancy. However, the mobilization of the nation’s manpower for security purposes has changed the picture in this as well as in other fields. The demand for accountants is likely to be stepped up. Although there is not likely to be any significant change in the pattern of discrimination in this field, young Jewish accountants should manage to find jobs with Jewish or non-biased firms so long as the national economy is supported by defense expenditures.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
