Opinion ID: 5539
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Applicant Flow Analysis.

Text: As a separate and distinct means of assessing the raceneutrality of Olson's hiring practices, Dr. Straszheim compared the percentage of blacks among Olson's applicants of known race to the percentage of blacks among Olson's hired employees of known race. The results of this analysis were completely disregarded by the district court's opinion and largely ignored by Olson's own expert, as well as by Olson's counsel in his argument to this court. Between 1984 and 1987, the period for which rejected applications were available, blacks constituted 29.6% of the roughly 1,800 applicants of known race. In the Spring Branch market, 30.1% of the applicants of known race for the relevant period were black; 39.5% in the Bellaire market; and 27.6% in the Katy market. By comparison, roughly 13.2% of the persons of known race hired by Olson's Spring Branch stores during the same time period were black, while blacks constituted 27.3% and 11.1% of the hires of known race for Olson's Bellaire and Katy locations, respectively, for the same period. In light of the racial mix of actual applications made to each of the stores, Dr. Straszheim concluded that the likelihood that Olson's observed hiring patterns resulted from truly race-neutral hiring practices was less than one chance in ten thousand (.0001) for the Spring Branch stores, less than 4 seven chances in one thousand (.0070) for the Bellaire stores, and less than two chances in one thousand (.0020) in the Katy store.