Most people in Sacramento think they know how to get a job: craft a spotless resume, be on-point during the job interview and then work diligently once you are on board in hopes that you can move up within the organization. But in his new book, one economics professor has some rather dispiriting news. His central claim is that if you are physically attractive, you are more likely to be rewarded at work regardless of performance.

This has implications for employment law because physical attractiveness is not one of the categories on which you are supposed to judge an employee. While "beautiful" and "ugly" are not protected classes (i.e. those against which you are not to discriminate) as are race, sexual orientation and gender, judging employees on how good-looking they are would violate the spirit of most anti-discrimination laws.

Still, University of Texas in Austin economics professor Daniel Hamermesh thinks that attractive people are more likely to do well in job interviews, get hired more quickly and are more likely to get more raises. In his book "Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People Are More Successful," he says attractive people earn about 3 to 4 percent more than people with "below-average looks."

(Advance publicity for Hamermesh's book has not said how he defines things like "attractive" and "below-average looks.")

Here in the U.S., we have crafted a body of laws meant to ensure that we are more or less a meritocracy. If Hamermesh is right about good-looking people doing better in the workplace, it shows that we haven't quite perfected this system yet.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, "On the Job, Beauty Is More Than Skin-Deep," Sue Shellenbarger, Oct. 27, 2011