If employers are required to hire a certain quota of class-C workers, exceeding the number of such persons that they would have employed in a free market based on productivity considerations, then they will first seek to take advantage of any borderline cases in the definition of class C. By exploiting these natural ambiguities in the boundaries of the class, employers can meet their legal quotas while minimizing the negative impact on production. For instance, if class C were hypothetically defined as "African-American," they might seek to include persons of Egyptian descent, or perhaps white-skinned persons from countries such as South Africa.

If the broadest possible interpretation of class C is insufficient to enable employers to meet their quota while maintaining maximum levels of production, then they may find it most profitable to hire some class-C workers without assigning them any significant responsibility. Of course, other class-C employees, who would have been hired even in a free market, may be highly productive; in many cases, unfortunately, the quota requirement may cast a pall of suspicion even over these exemplary workers. The workers hired to meet quotas, meanwhile, fail to obtain the practical job experience they need for long-term career advancement.