Employment Effects of Job Search Assistance for the Long-Term Unemployed

Abstract

We analyze the effects of a job search assistance (JSA) program for the long-term unemployed. JSA increases employment in the first year after assignment by about 4 percentage points. However, averaged over five years, JSA decreases employment, albeit insignificantly so. JSA increases job finding chances early on, but two to four years after it starts, job seekers assigned to JSA are 6 percentage points less likely to have a job compared to job seekers in the control group. JSA manages to find jobs quickly for the long-term unemployed, but the duration of the new jobs is shorter.