Employment Job Search Research Articles

Engaging to Disengage

As efforts to increase work engagement are commonly thought of as an organizational approach to motivate employees and reduce turnover, there has been little research connecting employees’ work engagement and their boarder career development. Drawing on an employability framework, the present study examines how work engagement may promote employed job search behavior over the course of two studies. Study 1, which involves a two-wave design with a 4-month time lag, finds support for a positive, direct effect of work engagement on preparatory job search behavior, as well as the moderating effect of employment status (i.e., permanent versus non-permanent) on this relationship. Study 2 uses a three-wave design to find a positive, indirect effect of work engagement on preparatory job search behavior via personal skill development, as well as the conditional indirect effect of employment status on this relationship. Practical and theoretical contributions are discussed in terms of their general implications for understanding a process, and a boundary condition of this process, that facilitate the understudied positive relationship between work engagement and employed job search.

Hunting while working: An expanded model of employed job search

Major theoretical models of job search fail to consider the changing nature of careers, the influence of the internet as a job search tool, and the diverse objectives for employed job search. Consequently, the study of employed job search has been largely confined to turnover research. We add to existing theory by providing a typology of employed search objectives based on modifying employment conditions (separation-seeking, change-seeking, leverage-seeking), contagion (mimetic-seeking) and employability (knowledge-seeking, network-seeking) and offer propositions related to the antecedents and implications for each objective. This classification offers an alternative explanation for previous research findings, provides a framework for future study, and has practical implications for employee retention and recruitment.

Employed Job Search among Young Workers: Do Women Still Search Differently than Men in the Internet Age?

Using data from the 2008–2011 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, this study explores the job search methods and strategies utilized by young workers. Although women are found to be marginally less likely to engage in on-the-job search than men, when they do they are equally likely to use the internet. The most important gender difference identified is that marriage serves as a strong inhibiting factor to search, both online and offline, for women but not so for men. In terms of search methods, men and women show almost identical patterns of usage. While there is substitution between online and offline search within particular method categories, employed searchers are generally using the internet as a complement to rather than as a replacement for more traditional offline search methods.

Self determination theory and employed job search

Self Determination Theory (SDT) predicts that employees who use controlled motivation to search for alternate (better) work are less successful than their counterparts who use autonomous motivation. Using Australian labour market data, we find strong support for SDT. We find that workers who face externally regulated pressures (pressure arising from involuntary part-time or casual labour contracts) to search for alternate employment are less likely to find better work, than workers who use autonomous motives to search for work. Our findings suggest that labour market policies trending towards ‘labour market flexibility/deregulation’ – which provide workers with controlled motives to search for work – will contribute to workers cycling through spells of insecure employment and possibly intermittent spells of unemployment with no realistic prospect of career development.

The Impact of Firing Restrictions on Labour Market Equilibrium in the Presence of On‐the‐job Search

Job-to-job turnover provides a way for employers to escape statutory firing costs, as unprofitable workers may willfully quit their job on receiving an outside offer, or may be induced to accept one that they would otherwise reject with a negotiated severance package. We formalise those mechanisms within an extension of the Diamond–Mortensen–Pissarides model that allows for employed job search. We find that our model explains why higher firing costs intensify job-to-job turnover at the expense of transitions out of unemployment and that ignoring on-the-job Search leads one to overstate the adverse impact of firing costs on employment.

Gender Differences in Employed Job Search: Why Do Women Search Less than Men?

Using an extended panel from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, this study explores the impact of marriage and children on the employed job search behavior of young workers. Estimation results from a bivariate probit model of employed job search that accounts for the selective nature of participation and employment demonstrate that both marriage and children significantly reduce the likelihood of on-the-job search for women but not for men. We find that married women with children have an employed search probability that is 18 percentage points below that of single women without children. Moreover, both the age and number of children present in the household are important determining factors for women in the decision to conduct on-the-job search. The inhibiting effect of children, however, is only pronounced for married women; single women with children are no less likely to search than single women without children.

Personal networks and the incomes of men and women in the United States: Do personal networks provide higher returns for men or women?

Despite the many studies focusing on the relationship between social networks and labor market outcomes, few have examined differences in returns to personal networks by gender. Informed by the Social Resources Theory, this study tests whether various types of employment job search networks provide greater returns for males or females. Of the few studies examining gender differences, some find that the benefits of social networks are specific to males; others maintain that they also extend to females, and others argue that the benefits are greater for females than males. There are several limitations of the studies focusing on gender and social networks within the labor market. Such studies have not employed nationally representative datasets. They also neglect important distinctions between various types of personal networks. In this study, these limitations are rectified. A nationally representative dataset, the 2002 General Social Survey, is employed to address how personal networks operate for men and women within the US labor market. Additionally, various types of personal networks are employed to enable a more nuanced approach than previous research. The study provides evidence that social networks provide higher returns to women than men, as women receive returns from their networks while men do not.

Unemployment Equilibrium and On-the-Job Search

This paper uses the search and matching framework to explore the impact of employed job search on the labour market. The specific features of our model are endogenous employed job search, flows in and out of the labour force, endogenous job destruction and heterogenous job creation. Also, job flows and workers flows do not coincide as we allow for job-to-job flows and labour force entries and exits. Employed job search is shown to have a substantial impact on unemployment dynamics but a negligible one on the level of unemployment. More on-the-job search leads to lower unemployment inflow and outflow, i.e. a more stagnant unemployment pool. With employed job search, the stock of vacancies is more cyclically sensitive, the unemployment outflow less cyclically sensitive and the unemployment inflow more cyclically sensitive than without employed job search. With our model, the impact of a change in unemployment benefit does not only occur through the conventional decrease in the unemployment outflow rate, but also through an increase in the unemployment inflow rate. The calibrated version of our model replicates well the cyclical behaviour of job and worker flows observed in the data.

A Note on Racial Differences in Employed Male Job Search

This article examines why black males are more likely to engage in employed job search than are their white counterparts. We focus primarily on the roles that expected wages, wage growth, and job characteristics have on explaining the observed differential. Using a sample of young men from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), the results indicate that the greater propensity of blacks to engage in employed job search is the result of their desire to obtain better jobs with more agreeable working conditions.

Consumer Choice for People with Cognitive Disabilities: Who Makes the Choices in the Job Search Process?

Historically, people with disabilities have been denied opportunities to make decisions that impact their lives, even though studies have shown that their are many benefits to choice-making for both people with disabilities and society in general. The barriers preventing consumer choice-making include low perception of consumer competence by caregivers, the limited opportunities provided by caregivers for informed choices, and service systems that perpetuate dependence. This article discusses the issues surrounding consumer choice-making in the supported employment job search process and looks at who makes the actual decisions when the supported employee does not. Recommendations include training for service providers to afford choice, training for supported employees to express preferences, and program development that focuses on the involvement of arents and supported employees in the job search process.