How effective are effort targets? This paper provides novel evidence on the effects of job search requirements on effort provision and labor market outcomes. Based on large-scale register data, we ...estimate the returns to required job search effort, instrumenting individual requirements with caseworker stringency. Identification is ensured by the conditional random assignment of job seekers to caseworkers. We find that the duration of un- and non-employment both decrease by 3% if the requirement increases by one monthly application. When instrumenting actual applications with caseworker stringency, an additionally provided monthly application decreases the length of spells by 4%. In line with theory, we further find that the effect of required effort decreases in the individual's voluntary effort. Finally, the requirement level causes small negative effects on job stability, reducing the duration of re-employment spells by 0.3% per required application. We find a zero effect on re-employment wages.
•We study effects of changes in the number of required and provided job applications, instrumented by caseworker stringency.•The duration of un- and non-employment spells both decrease by 3% if the requirement increases by one monthly application.•An additional provided monthly job application decreases the length of spells by 4%.•We find small negative effects on job stability and no effect on re-employment wages.
Abstract
The job-finding rate of unemployment insurance (UI) recipients declines in the initial months of unemployment and then exhibits a spike at the benefit exhaustion point. A range of ...theoretical explanations have been proposed, but those are hard to disentangle using data on job finding alone. To better understand the underlying mechanisms, we conducted a large text-message-based survey of unemployed workers in Germany. We surveyed 6,349 UI recipients twice a week for four months about their job search effort. The panel structure allows us to observe how search effort evolves in individuals over the unemployment spell. We provide three key facts: (i) search effort is flat early on in the UI spell, (ii) search effort exhibits an increase up to UI exhaustion and a decrease thereafter, (iii) UI recipients do not appear to time job start dates to coincide with the UI exhaustion point. A standard search model with unobserved heterogeneity struggles to explain the second fact, and a model of storable offers is not consistent with the third fact. The patterns are well captured by a model of reference-dependent job search or by a model with duration dependence in search cost.
We discuss three important properties of panel data event study designs. First, assuming constant treatment effects before and/or after some event time, also known as binning, is a natural ...restriction, which identifies dynamic treatment effects in the absence of never‐treated units. Second, event study designs with binned endpoints and distributed‐lag models are numerically identical. Third, classic dummy variable event study designs can be generalized to models that account for multiple treatments of different signs and varying intensities. We demonstrate the practical relevance of our methodological points in an application studying the effects of unemployment benefit duration on job search effort.
•Online job search generates new data for micro and macro research.•Interventions in online job search allows for “search design”, which can incorporate lessons from labor economics.•Randomized ...evaluations will become increasingly easy online.•This paper reviews recent advances along these lines, discusses advantages and drawbacks, and outlines avenues for future research.
Online job search opens new avenues to experimentally alter the search process, and to engage in “search design”. It also offers an unprecedented channel to collect data on how job seekers search for jobs and how firms search for employees. This paper discusses the research possibilities that this generates and reviews some of the recent developments in this area.
This study used a meta-analysis to gain a clearer understanding of the relationships between behavioral job search self-efficacy (JSSE) and its relevant variables. Study variables were selected based ...on the career self-management model of the social cognitive career theory, which comprehensively includes sources and outcomes of JSSE. In addition, moderators that reflect various sample characteristics and the studies' research designs were included to clarify the hitherto inconsistent results between JSSE and related variables. Based on the analysis on 80 independent samples from 74 articles, results showed that supports and proactive personality (—the antecedent variables) and emotional wellbeing (—the consequence variable) had consistently strong relations with JSSE. Moderator analyses showed that sample type (undergraduates, laidoff), cultural value (individualism, collectivism), length of unemployment (over 6 months, under 6 months), and research design (cross-sectional, longitudinal) moderated the links between JSSE and two consequence variables, job search action, and job-search-related outcome. These results indicate that it is important to consider the agents of job search, their job search contexts, and methodological issues in conducting future research and interventions. Implications of the results are discussed and future research and practice are considered.
•Meta-analyzed the job search self-efficacy based on the career self-management model•JSSE had notable relationships with proactive personality and contextual support.•JSSE had notable relationships with adaptive outcomes, anxiety, and life satisfaction.•Sample characteristics act as moderators between JSSE, search action, and employment.•Research design acts as a moderator between JSSE and job search action.
Primarily using a variable-centered approach, job search research explores the connections between antecedents, processes, and outcomes. A person-centered approach, however, categorizes individuals ...based on personal and contextual elements. This study used CSM as a theoretical framework to identify job seeker profiles by exploring configurations of job search self-efficacy, conscientiousness, financial need, social pressure, and job search quality and intensity. We examined how these profiles correspond with sociodemographic variables and job search outcomes such as rumination, interviews, and job offers. In a sample of 300 job seekers, four profiles emerged: casual job search contemplator, financially burdened job seeker, financially secure job seeker, and multifaceted job search strategist. The contemplator profile correlated with the fewest interviews, while the financially burdened job seeker had the most. These findings suggest career counselors need to recognize distinctive job seeker patterns requiring tailored counseling approaches, underscoring the potential of the person-centered approach for further job search research.
This paper integrates the classic theory of firm boundaries, through span of control or taste for variety, into a model of the labor market with random matching and on‐the‐job search. Firms choose ...when to enter and exit, whether to create vacancies or destroy jobs in response to shocks, and Bertrand‐compete to hire and retain workers. Tractability is obtained by proving that, under a parsimonious set of assumptions, all worker and firm decisions are characterized by their joint surplus, which in turn only depends on firm productivity and size. The job ladder in marginal surplus that emerges in equilibrium determines net poaching patterns by firm characteristics that are in line with the data. As frictions vanish, the model converges to a standard competitive model of firm dynamics. The combination of firm dynamics and search frictions allows the model to: (i) quantify the misallocation cost of frictions; (ii) replicate elusive life‐cycle growth profiles of superstar firms; and (iii) make sense of the failure of the job ladder around the Great Recession as a result of the collapse of firm entry.
This article derives novel testable implications of referral-based job search networks in which employees provide employers with information about potential new hires that they otherwise would not ...have. Using comprehensive matched employer-employee data covering the entire workforce in one large metropolitan labour market combined with unique survey data linked to administrative records, we provide evidence that workers earn higher wages and are less inclined to leave their firms if they have obtained their job through a referral. These effects are particularly strong at the beginning of the employment relationship and decline with tenure in the firm, suggesting that firms and workers learn about workers' productivity over time. Overall, our findings imply that job search networks help to reduce informational deficiencies in the labour market and lead to productivity gains for workers and firms.
This paper investigates the effects of stricter job search-related conditions for Unemployment Insurance (UI) eligibility on the job search behaviour of claimants. Estimation makes use of exogenous ...variation introduced by the UK Jobseeker’s Allowance. A significant share of claimants is found to leave the register increasing search intensity as well as request for job search assistance from Public Employment Centres. Exits with increased search are performed predominantly by liquidity constrained individuals. This evidence suggests that tighter search conditionality can lead committed jobseekers to un-subsidized search, reducing the capacity of UI to protect workers against the risk of unemployment.
Modern job search technologies enable job seekers to monitor the arrival of newly posted vacancies. This paper conceptualizes search as a monitoring decision and shows that monitoring technologies ...give rise to a novel source of strategic complementarities in search and can thus lead to potentially destabilizing multiplicity of equilibria. The model provides a theory of belief-driven fluctuations in labor supply that can permanently shift the path of the economy, and offers an explanation for persistently weak wage growth despite low unemployment during the recovery from the Great Recession.
•Theoretical model of search as monitoring decision.•First-mover advantage leads to strategic complementarities and multiple equilibria.•Model gives rise to belief-driven labor supply fluctuations.•Model can help to account for overshooting of unemployment after Great Recession despite tepid wage growth.
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