{
  "registry_version": "1.0.0",
  "data": {
    "title": "Employment Gap Downranking Bias",
    "status": "active",
    "evidence_ids": [
      "evidence.duration_dependence_and_labor_market_conditions_evidence_from_a_field_experiment"
    ],
    "content": "# Employment Gap Downranking Bias\n\nAutomated ranking algorithms or human screeners discount candidates with recent career breaks regardless of verified project history.\n\n### Structural Context\n- **Actor:** `system`\n- **Nature:** `bias`\n- **Removability:** `none`\n\n### Causal Relations\n- Amplifies `mech.automated_keyword_qualification_filter` — Automated Keyword / Qualification Filter\n\n### Non-Inferences\n- An employment gap does not correlate with a decline in technical ability.",
    "aliases": [
      "M-011"
    ],
    "id": "mech.employment_gap_downranking_bias",
    "type": "mechanism",
    "summary": "Automated ranking algorithms or human screeners discount candidates with recent career breaks regardless of verified project history.",
    "operates_at": [
      "bar.automated_filter_parser_threshold",
      "bar.inbound_screening_triage"
    ],
    "emissions": [
      {
        "artifact": "obs.complete_silence_after_submission",
        "fidelity": "void",
        "likelihood": "high",
        "evidence": [
          "evidence.duration_dependence_and_labor_market_conditions_evidence_from_a_field_experiment"
        ],
        "observed_at": [
          "ingestion"
        ]
      },
      {
        "artifact": "obs.generic_closer_alignment_rejection_template",
        "fidelity": "euphemism",
        "likelihood": "high",
        "evidence": [
          "evidence.duration_dependence_and_labor_market_conditions_evidence_from_a_field_experiment"
        ],
        "observed_at": [
          "screening"
        ]
      }
    ],
    "facets": {
      "actor": "system",
      "nature": "bias",
      "visibility": "inferable",
      "removability": "none"
    },
    "amplifies": [
      "mech.automated_keyword_qualification_filter"
    ],
    "masks": [],
    "evidence_level": "supported",
    "honest_baseline": false,
    "specimens": [
      {
        "kind": "ats",
        "label": "Ranking breakdown, as scored",
        "lines": [
          {
            "text": "Skills match: 91/100",
            "tell": false
          },
          {
            "text": "Domain match: 88/100",
            "tell": false
          },
          {
            "text": "Continuity penalty: −22 (gap of 14 months detected)",
            "tell": true
          },
          {
            "text": "Final rank: 57/100 — below advance threshold",
            "tell": false
          }
        ],
        "reading": "The penalty is applied to a date range, not to anything in the work. Nothing the candidate shipped during or after the gap is in the arithmetic."
      }
    ],
    "perspectives": [
      {
        "actor": "actor.ats_vendor",
        "sees": "The date ranges the parser extracts from the history, and the continuity feature that reads them. Work done inside a gap is not among the fields that feature reads.",
        "reads": "The penalty is a weight in the arithmetic that produces one number. A rank below the advance threshold reads the same whether it came from the match or from the deduction.",
        "does": "Returns the rank and places the profile below the threshold. The setting ships enabled and stays on until a customer changes it."
      },
      {
        "actor": "actor.recruiter",
        "sees": "The list in the order the platform returns it. The arithmetic that produced the order is not displayed alongside it.",
        "reads": "The order is where the reading starts, and capacity ends it partway down. A profile below that point leaves no record that it was skipped.",
        "does": "Screens from the top of the order until the week's capacity is spent. What sits below that point is not read, and is not rejected either."
      },
      {
        "actor": "actor.candidate",
        "sees": "Their own history with the interval in it, and afterwards either silence or template wording.",
        "reads": "The interval and the outcome coincide, and nothing in the message separates a deduction on a date range from a judgement of the work.",
        "does": "Puts the interval and the work done inside it into the history itself. The date range is a fact of record, and it is what the ranking reads."
      }
    ],
    "non_inferences": [
      "An employment gap does not correlate with a decline in technical ability."
    ],
    "agency_zones": {
      "ats-vendor": "high",
      "recruiter": "low",
      "candidate": "low"
    }
  }
}