Unemployed Job Seekers Research Articles

Why Do Unemployed Americans Blame Themselves While Israelis Blame the System?

This article provides a new account of American job seekers' individualized understandings of their labor-market difficulties, and more broadly, of how structural conditions shape subjective responses. Unemployed white-collar workers in the U.S. tend to interpret their labor market difficulties as reflecting flaws in themselves, while Israelis tend to perceive flaws in the hiring system. These different responses have profound individual and societal implications. Drawing on in-depth interviews with unemployed job seekers and participant observations at support groups in the U.S. and Israel, this article shows how different 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. Challenging the broad cultural explanations of the unemployment experience in the existing literature, this article shows how subjective responses to unemployment are generated by the search experiences associated with institutionally rooted job search games.

Employed and Unemployed Job Seekers and the Business Cycle

AbstractThe job search literature suggests that on‐the‐job search reduces the probability of un employed people finding jobs. However, there is little evidence that employed and unemployed job seekers are similar or apply for the same jobs. We compare employed and unemployed job seekers in their individual characteristics, preferences over working hours, job‐search strategies and employment histories, and identify how differences vary over the business cycle. We find systematic differences which persist over the business cycle. Our results are consistent with a segmented labour market in which employed and unemployed job seekers are unlikely to directly compete with each other for jobs.

Occupational Change and Mobility Among Employed and Unemployed Job Seekers

AbstractWe use data from the Labour Force Survey to show that employed and unemployed job seekers in Great Britain originate from different occupations and find jobs in different occupations. We find substantial differences in occupational mobility between job seekers: employed job seekers are most likely to move to occupations paying higher average wages relative to their previous occupation, while unemployed job seekers are most likely to move to lower paying occupations. Employed and unemployed job seekers exhibit different patterns of occupational mobility and, therefore, do not accept the same types of jobs.

Being unemployed in the boundaryless career era: Does psychological mobility pay off?

In the notions of the boundaryless and self-directed careers, being able to adjust swiftly to different work and career circumstances is deemed to be an imperative component of career success. Also for unemployed individuals psychological mobility, i.e. the extent to which people can envision a variety of career options as viable opportunities for them, is assumed to be a key attitude. In this study, we examine whether psychological mobility stimulates or constraints unemployed jobseekers' search success. Hereto, we draw on data of 1840 Belgian unemployed individuals. As hypothesized, we find that psychologically mobile individuals spend more time searching for a job and are invited more often to a selection interview. However, on average they receive less job offers, since they also experience more constraints in their job search process. Overall, our study demonstrates that psychological mobility cannot straightforwardly be associated with positive career outcomes in every context or subpopulation and points to the necessity of taking structure and not only agency factors into account to fully grasp the outcomes of the boundaryless career.

Willingness to commute long distance among job seekers in Dalarna, Sweden

Previous studies on commuting behavior and willingness towards commuting have analyzed individuals who are active in the workforce and have largely focused on larger metropolitan regions. This paper presents results from a survey of unemployed job seekers in the county of Dalarna, Sweden and analyzes the differences in willingness towards long-distance commuting between individuals with different socio-economic situations and experiences of unemployment. The analysis is conducted through a linear probability model complemented with a logistic regression model. Conclusions are drawn on the socio-economic factors that influence the probability of an individual’s willingness to commute longer than 40min. The analysis also takes interaction between different factors into account. The study concludes that the factors influencing the willingness to commute are gender, level of education, and the presence of children in the household. Furthermore, the interactions between age and length of unemployment, age and educational level, and age and gender are shown to be significant in the willingness to commute long distances.

The Effects of a Learning‐Goal Orientation Training on Self‐Regulation: A Field Experiment Among Unemployed Job Seekers

Finding reemployment after job loss is a complex and difficult task that requires extensive motivation and self‐regulation. This study aimed to examine whether improving unemployed job seekers’ cognitive self‐regulation can increase reemployment probabilities. Based on the goal orientation literature, we developed a learning‐goal orientation (LGO) training, which focused on goal setting aimed at improving rather than demonstrating competences and creating a climate of development and improvement. We predicted that the LGO training would influence peoples’ goal orientation towards job seeking, which in turn would relate to learning from failure, strategy awareness, and self‐efficacy, leading to job‐search intentions, resulting in increased reemployment status. Using a 2‐group quasi‐experimental design with 223 unemployed job seekers, we found support for these predictions, except for self‐efficacy. The results suggest that an LGO training is a promising tool to improve self‐regulation in and effectiveness of job search.

Navigating the Black Hole: Explicating Layers of Job Search Context and Adaptational Responses

Via a qualitative study, we introduce and elucidate 5 layers of context‐related job search demands (omnibus, organizational, social, task, and personal) that are encountered by both employed and unemployed job seekers. We develop a process model to portray the mechanisms (managing mood and motivation, feedback/help seeking, and self‐reflection/learning) through which these context‐related demands are related to several important job search outcomes. We provide new insight into employed job seekers, showing that they report the job search as full of difficulties, obstacles, and challenges, and that some of these demands parallel those that unemployed job seekers face.

Evidence on the Incidence of Wage Posting, Wage Bargaining, and On-the-Job Search

Some workers bargain with prospective employers before accepting a job. Others face a posted wage as a take-it-or-leave-it opportunity. Both modes of wage determination have generated large bodies of research. We surveyed a representative sample of US workers to inquire about the wage determination process at the time they were hired into their current or most recent jobs. A third of the respondents reported bargaining over pay before accepting their current jobs. Almost a third of workers had precise information about pay when they first met with their employers, a sign of wage posting. About 40 percent of workers were on-the-job searchers—they could have remained at their earlier jobs at the time they accepted their current jobs, indicating a more favorable bargaining position than is held by unemployed job-seekers. About half of all workers reported that their employers had learned their pay in their earlier jobs before making the offer that led to the current job. (JEL C83, J31, J52, J64)

Employers’ Attitudes Toward Older Workers and Obstacles and Opportunities for the Older Unemployed to Reenter Working Life

The present study aimed at identifying the attitude-related barriers that older unemployed, jobseeking workers (50+) face when they endeavor to reenter the labor market and to investigate employers’ attitudes and perceptions of older workers. Two studies were conducted. In study 1, interviews were undertaken with 26 unemployed persons and 24 representatives of other stakeholders, including social partners and officials representing the Social Insurance Agency (FK) and the Public Employment Service (AF). In study 2, the attitudes among private sector employers were studied by carrying out a questionnaire survey (N = 147). The interview results showed that many unemployed job seekers had experienced negative age-related attitudes among employers. This observation was supported by other stakeholders. Perceived attitudes to older workers and lack of updated competence were considered crucial. The questionnaire study showed a mixed picture concerning employer attitudes. There was a statistical difference between older (>50 years) and younger employers; older employers believed that older women wanted competence development to a greater extent. There was also a significant difference between female and male employers’ opinions; female employers, in particular the older ones, assessed that older women wished competence development to a greater extent. These differences were not found with respect to views on older men. About half (52%) of the employers had the opinion that there was no difference between older and younger employees with respect to the ability to cope with changes or learning new things. However, younger female employers (but not older female employers) considered that older employees had greater difficulties with changes or learning new things. It is concluded that negative attitudes to older workers with respect to competence development tend to be most common among younger employers.

Are American Homeowners Locked into Their Houses? The Impact of Housing Market Conditions on State-to-State Migration

U.S. policymakers are concerned that negative home equity arising from the severe housing market decline may be constraining geographic mobility and consequently serving as a factor in the nation’s persistently high unemployment rate. Indeed, the widespread drop in house prices since 2007 has increased the share of homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages. At the same time, migration across states and among homeowners has fallen sharply. Using a logistic regression framework to analyze data from the Internal Revenue Service on state-to-state migration between 2006 and 2009, the authors discover evidence that “house lock” decreases mobility but find it has a negligible impact on the national unemployment rate. A one-standard deviation increase in the share of underwater nonprime households in the origin state reduces the outflow of migrants from the origin to the destination state by 2.9 percent. When aggregated across the United States, this decrease in mobility reduces the national state-to-state migration rate by 0.05 percentage points, resulting in roughly 110,000 to 150,000 fewer individuals migrating across state lines in any given year. Assuming that all of these discouraged migrants were job-seekers who were previously unemployed before relocating and then found a job in their new state would reduce the nation’s unemployment rate by at most one-tenth of a percentage point in a given year. The cumulative effect over this period would yield an unemployment rate of 9.0 percent versus 9.3 percent in 2009. Recognizing that not all state-to-state migrants are job-seekers, not all job-seekers were previously unemployed, and not all previously unemployed job-seekers will successfully find work in their new location yields an unemployment rate that is virtually unchanged from the actual one that prevailed from 2006 to 2009.

Surmountable Hurdles? Employers’ Perception of the Long Term Unemployed and Labour Market Interventions

Over the last few years, most OECD countries have extended their activation policy to new groups of non-working people, including the long term unemployed (LTU). However, it is known that LTU people tend to be regarded as potentially problematic persons by employers. This is likely to constitute a major obstacle for long term unemployed jobseekers. On the basis of a survey among employers in a Swiss canton (N=722), this paper aims to shed some light on the perception employers have of the long term unemployed and whether may matter for recruitment practices. It also asks what, from the employer point of view, may convince them to take the risk of hiring a LTU person. Key findings: Large companies are more likely to use long term unemployment status as a discriminating factor. More likely to hire LTU people seem to be employers who are aware of some of the problems this group may have (low productivity) and who are used to work with the employment agency. Finally, a test period or the recommendation of a trustworthy person are seen as the factors most likely to facilitate access to jobs for LTU people.

DO HIRING SUBSIDIES REDUCE UNEMPLOYMENT AMONG OLDER WORKERS? EVIDENCE FROM NATURAL EXPERIMENTS

We estimate the effects of hiring subsidies for older workers on transitions from unemployment to employment in Germany. Using a natural experiment, our first set of estimates is based on a legal change extending the group of eligible unemployed persons. A subsequent legal change in the opposite direction is used to validate these results. Our data cover the population of unemployed jobseekers in Germany and was specifically made available for our purposes from administrative data. Consistent support for an employment effect of hiring subsidies can only be found for women in East Germany. Concerning other population groups, firms’ hiring behavior is hardly influenced by the program and hiring subsidies mainly lead to deadweight effects. (JEL: J64, H24, C31)

Matching, adverse selection and labour market flows in a (post)transition setting: the case of Croatia

This article studies employment prospects of different types of job seekers in Croatia by upgrading the model of adverse selection with firing costs. Based on Labour Force Survey data for 1996–2006 we find the existence of adverse selection in the Croatian labour market. Reservation wage, as the main determinant of firing costs in the model, positively affects the probability of changing job for employed job seekers, while it has a negative impact on the probability of ‘switching’ for unemployed job seekers. However, if reservation wage is treated as endogenous in the model, instrumental variable estimation shows that its effect on the probability of ‘switching’ becomes positive and significant only for the unemployed group. This is explained by the effect of educational attainment, which serves as the ‘instrument’ and obviously works as an efficient signal for workers' productivity among the unemployed. Nevertheless, the effect of reservation wage on employment probabilities for both groups is declining over time, especially after the legislative reform in 2004, indicating a lower impact of firing costs. Finally, the hypothesis on self-discrimination of the unemployed receiving unemployment benefits is tested, showing a positive impact of unemployment benefits on the reservation wage and a negative one on the probability of finding a job.

Job Search Intensity and Wage Flexibility Among Different Age Groups

This study explores how wage flexibility and job search intensity evolve with search duration among young, middle-aged and older job seekers. It moreover investigates whether financial hardship and reemployment efficacy mediate the relationships. Multi-group structural equation modeling on a sample of 1205 Belgian unemployed job seekers showed that search duration affected both wage flexibility and job search intensity, and that effect sizes differed across age groups. Wage flexibility did not evolve with search duration among young and middle-aged job seekers. Yet, our analyses revealed a direct, negative relationship between search duration and wage flexibility among older job seekers. While financial hardship and reemployment efficacy fully mediate the positive relationship between search duration and search intensity for middle-aged seekers, they only partially mediate the relationship for older job seekers. We discuss implications for theory, practice and future research.

Sense of coherence predicts employment outcomes after job loss

This study investigated sense of coherence (SOC) as a potential predictor of employment outcomes of unemployed job seekers. Ninety‐eight unemployed persons were surveyed at 2 measurement points 6 months apart. The findings showed that strong SOC at baseline predicted positive outcomes (reemployment or being a student) 6 months later. SOC evidently is an important personal resource that enhances the chances of escaping unemployment.

Unemployed job seekers' access to interactive service work

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to consider the impact of the shift to a service‐based economy on the employability of unemployed job seekers, specifically focussing on skill acquisition and utilisation. The article considers the provision of training opportunities for unemployed people who are seeking to re‐enter the workplace, and whether such training is taking into account the skills demanded in interactive service work. The article also considers the views of unemployed people towards interactive service work.Design/methodology/approachThe study employs a qualitative approach drawing on interview and focus group data gathered from policymakers, training providers and unemployed job seekers.FindingsThe data suggests there is little existing training provision for interactive service work for unemployed job seekers and that where it does exist it is not geared towards the skills demands of employers. It is also apparent from the research that unemployed job seekers hold a negative view of employment in the interactive service sector, due to both objective and subjective factors.Research limitations/implicationsThe research is limited to one geographical region and research in other regenerating cities could offer potentially different insights.Practical implicationsThe article enjoins with policy debates which are focussing on skills training to enhance employability, considering the importance of apposite skills training. The article also examines the practical and attitudinal barriers to employment that prevent many unemployed jobseekers from gaining access to service sector employment.Originality/valueThe article offers a valuable contribution to ongoing debates surrounding access to employment in the service sector for unemployed job seekers.

Explaining Differences in Job Search Outcomes between Employed and Unemployed Job Seekers

We use individual data for Great Britain over the period 1992-2009 to compare the probability that employed and unemployed job seekers find a job and the quality of the job they find. The job finding rate of unemployed job seekers is 50 percent higher than that of employed job seekers, and this difference remains even when controlling for differences in observable worker characteristics and job search behaviour. We present evidence suggesting that these differences in the job finding probability is caused by behavioural differences between employed and unemployed job seekers rather than differences in characteristics. Consistent with search theory, we find that employed job seekers are more selective in evaluating job offers and are therefore less likely to find a job offer acceptable; for example, they are less likely to accept low-wage and temporary jobs, or jobs that do not meet their working hour requirements.

Employed and Unemployed Job Seekers: Are They Substitutes?

Employed and Unemployed Job Seekers: Are They Substitutes?

Transitions Out of Casual Employment: The Australian Experience

This paper uses longitudinal data to examine the extent to which casual employees, who account for almost 25 percent of all Australian employees, are able to access non-casual jobs in the future, and to contrast their experiences with that of other labor market participants. A dynamic mixed multinomial logit model of labor market states is estimated which reveals high rates of mobility from casual employment into non-casual employment. Among men, casual employees are found to be far more likely to make the transition into non-casual employment than otherwise comparable unemployed job seekers. For women, however, this is not the case. Copyright © 2011 The Regents of the University of California.

The effect of applicant–employee fit and temporal construal on employer attraction and pursuit intentions

Although applicant–employee fit has emerged as an important topic in recruitment research, little is known about how job seekers’ perceived similarity with the employees working for an organization affects employer attraction. In this research, we introduce temporal construal as a crucial moderating variable and study how the temporal decision context affects the weighting of applicant–employee fit. In particular, we argue that applicant–employee fit is construed in abstract, high‐level terms, and exerts a stronger influence when prospective applicants hold a distant time perspective. In contrast, instrumental attributes such as pay level represent low‐level construals and gain greater relevance when prospective applicants hold a near time perspective. Two experiments involving a student sample and a sample of unemployed job seekers supported these predictions.