Abstract
The effect of previous geographic mobility on the length of an unemployed person's job search in the United States is examined. "This study proposed that knowledge of regional wage differentials and other market conditions give a worker with prior geographic mobility experience a better stock of information than one who has worked all of his or her work life in the same geographical location. It is proposed that this superior stock of information has a significant impact on the amount of time it takes an unemployed worker to locate and accept a job." Data are from the 1981 Panel Study of Income Dynamics.
Highlights
Atthe beginning ofany unemployment spell, a worker with prior migration experience may be more willing to search for a new job over a wider area and to accept a job offer in another labor market from both theoretical job search literature and from previous empirical migration research, it appears likely that there is a link between prior geographic mobility and search duration
The prior migration variable appears to bepicking up some facet of labor market information that other work experience variables included in past studies, such as age or education levels, omit
These results appear to predict that a labor market made up of a high proportion ofprior migrants, or one that has experienced high levels of immigration from other labor markets, will exhibit lower average unemployment rates, ceteris paribus
Summary
Researchinto the unemploymentproblem has shown that there is a wide variation in the amount oftime unemployedworkers take to fmdjobs. Atthe beginning ofany unemployment spell, a worker with prior migration experience may be more willing to search for a new job over a wider area and to accept a job offer in another labor market from both theoretical job search literature and from previous empirical migration research, it appears likely that there is a link between prior geographic mobility and search duration This link, if it exists, has not been explicitly accounted for in p~t research using typical worker experience variables. In order for the reservation wage to equal the maximum expected wage, one must assume an infinite time horizon with no discounting Since these two factors are likely, invariant to prior migration, when years of experience is accounted for explicitly, the introduction of a finite time horizon and discounting would serve only to complicate the derivation while yielding the same conclusion-those with less information or more uncertainty regarding the wage offer distribution will likely search for longer periods of time, ceteris paribus. A positive relationship is expected between search time and relative unemployment in the local area
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