Employers pay overweight workers less, new study reveals
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Rising health care costs are not the only thing burning into the wallets of the more than one-third of the world’s population who are either obese or overweight—a majority of them are also getting shortchanged when it comes to their salary.
According to a new study from LinkedIn, people who are overweight on average earn less than $2,512 per year than their slimmer colleagues.
The professional networking service polled the salaries for more than 4,000 full-and part-time employees in the U.K. and found that workers who are classed as obese earned less.
What’s more, nearly one in four workers who have a body mass index (BMI) of 25 or higher also felt that they missed out or were overlooked for a promotion because of their size.
But it’s not just managers judging, the study found that more than half of overweight workers say they felt left out of team activities at work because of how they looked. Overall, almost half added that they felt that thinner colleagues progressed quicker in the company than they did.
Women, in particular, felt the brunt of the prejudice, LinkedIn noted, with 39 percent of them reporting bias over their weight compared to 28 percent of men.
Ngaire Moyes, senior director of brand marketing and communications at LinkedIn said in a statement that the findings were “sad" and it's disheartening to see that "bias based on size is still an issue in the workplace in 2018.”
Moyes added that LinkedIn has created a number of groups and discussion boards on LinkedIn to help people who are experiencing prejudice regarding their weight.
"We hope more members will be encouraged to take part in the discussion about how it affects them and how size bias can be tackled,” she said.