Abstract
Unemployed white-collar workers in Israel and the U.S. come to different subjective understandings of their labor market difficulties: Israelis tend to blame the system, while Americans tend to blame themselves. These different responses have profound individual and societal implications. Using in-depth interviews and observations at support groups, this paper shows how different hiring practices and labor market institutions give rise to distinct job search “games,” which I call the “chemistry” game in the U.S. and the “specs” game in Israel. Variations in the games’ structures generate particular search experiences that ultimately account for the varied subjective responses to unemployment.
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