Page 53 - Harvard Business Review, November-December 2018

JOB SEARCH
A Tattoo Won’t Hurt Your Job

Prospects

by Alison Beard

FROM THE NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 2018 ISSUE

HALFDARK/GETTY IMAGES

ichael T. French of the University of Miami and colleagues surveyed more than

2,000 people in the United States and found that those with tattoos were no less

Mlikely to be employed than their uninked counterparts, and that average earnings

were the same for both groups. In fact, tattooed men were slightly more likely to have jobs than

other men. The conclusion: A tattoo won’t hurt your job prospects.

Professor French, defend your research.

French: We went in expecting to find a negative relationship between tattoos and success in the

labor market. My coauthors—Karoline Mortensen, who is also at Miami, and Andrew Timming of

the University of Western Australia—and I thought we might see a wage penalty or employment