the executive chain, especially in financial services, with a persistent pay gap of 20 - 30 % and low levels of representation at executive level. on ethnicity, as john parker ’ s report last week made clear, we are scarcely out of the for further details please see haldane ( 2014 ) ‘ central bank psychology ’. all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / publications / pages / speeches / default. aspx starting blocks. and on disability, physical and mental, much the same could be said. whatever else we do, we must not let up in continuing to make progress along these dimensions of diversity. second, notwithstanding that, i do think we need to do a much better job of understanding and measuring the more subtle, cognitive and socio - economic dimensions of diversity. they are harder to identify and measure, as the information exists between our ears rather than on our faces. but that is precisely why unconscious biases may be largest and most in need of redress. as experience with gender and ethnicity illustrates, measurement and, ultimately, publication of diversity metrics can be important first steps towards creating a more socio - economically and cognitively diverse workforce. metrics hold a mirror up to us all. sometimes that casts a reflection none of us much like – a reflection that then prompts us to do better. and the measurement task is far from impossible. simple metrics of socio - economic background already exist, however imperfect, and are being used in some organisations to help recruitment. psychometric and neuroscientific tests are being developed at pace which help paint a picture – sometimes quite literally, through mri scans – of an individual ’ s cognitive skills. in this respect, i applaud the diversity project ’ s intention to develop multiple metrics of diversity and to share this information among its membership. third, recruitment. the filters applied in many of our standard recruitment procedures are, to my mind, a big barrier to building a diverse workforce. filters such as academic prowess ( grades at school and university ), work experience ( internships and voluntary activities ) and social skills ( team - building and networking ) are standard recruitment filters and sound perfectly sensible. yet these filters may, inadvertently but unhelpfully, disadvantage certain cohorts of society. those whose parental incomes, and hence school choice, may have held back their academic scores and work experience opportunities. those whose personality - type or brain circuitry means they are not as

socially skilled or who dread interviews or team interactions. let me take a specific example - autism. it is also well - known that, despite their social challenges, many with autism have powerful intellectual skills – for example, in pattern recognition. that it is why it has been estimated that as many as 50 % of silicon valley innovators may have asperger ’ s syndrome, a type of autism. yet how easy would it be for those with autism to thrive in our organisations? the facts rather speak for themselves. only around 12 % of high - functioning individuals with autism are in work. another aspect to recruitment which inhibits diversity - building is that it tends to be judged with individual, rather than the organisational, attributes in mind. let ’ s take a simple example to illustrate. consider two candidates for a job sitting a test. the first scores 8 out of 10, the second 4 out of 10. the first person is clearly the best person for the job. but are they the right person for the organisation? see the economist ( 2016 ) ‘ beautiful minds, wasted : how not to squander the potential of autistic people ’. all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / publications / pages / speeches / default. aspx that is not so clear. what if the second person answers correctly the two questions the first candidate gets wrong. and what if the same is true of most of the existing employees in the company – likely, as they will have probably helped set the test. in this situation, the second candidate may well be the better one for the organisation because they bring organisational strength through diversity, despite being individually weaker. yet, hand on heart, how many of the organisations in this room have recruitment procedures which would choose the second candidate over the first? i suspect few. fourth, social mobility. the evidence on entrenched barriers to progress among those from socially disadvantaged backgrounds is discouraging. recent work by economic historian greg clark has shown that social status has remained a strongly inherited characteristic through the ages, even more so than physiological features such as height. that high degree of inertia in social status has, moreover, scarcely changed over the course of centuries, despite decades of attempts to broaden educational and work opportunities. on some measures, social mobility in england today is little greater than in the 17th century. there are few signs of this pattern having improved over recent decades. a report last year by