Education and the duration of job search and unemployment in urban India: An empirical analysis based on a survey of Delhi jobseekers

This paper investigates why educated jobseekers tend to experience longer search and unemployment durations than their less educated counterparts. The empirical analysis based upon a survey of Delhi jobseekers indicates that while the duration of search is mainly determined by educational level, the duration of unemployment is more closely related to personal and family characteristics normally associated with education. Earnings function results are consistent with the proposition that the educated search longer because their returns are higher.     

Minimum wages and youth unemployment

This paper constructs a labor search model to explore the effects of minimum wages on youth unemployment. To capture the gradual decline in unemployment for young workers as they age, the standard search model is extended so that workers gain experience when employed. Experienced workers have higher average productivity and lower job finding and separation rates that match wage and worker flow data. In this environment, minimum wages can have large effects on unemployment because they interact with a worker's ability to gain job experience. The increase in minimum wages between 2007 and 2009 can account for a 0.8 percentage point increase in the steady state unemployment rate and a 2.8 percentage point increase in unemployment for 15–24 year old workers in the model parameterized to simulate outcomes of high school educated workers. Minimum wages can also help explain the high rates of youth unemployment in France compared to the United States.     

Unemployment durations of job losers in a labour market in transition

Slovakia is one of the Central European countries in transformation from a centralized command system to a decentralized market economy. This paper studies the labour market position of Slovak job losers. Using data from labour force surveys we analyse exit rates out of unemployment. We find that male, young, higher educated job losers in districts with low unemployment rates have substantially shorter unemployment durations than their counterparts. There is evidence that for some job losers it is very hard to find a new job.     

The unemployment experience of male immigrants in England

In this paper the unemployment experience of immigrant men in the English labour market is examined, using 1993–1994 data from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey of the United Kingdom. Hypotheses proposed by Chiswick (1982) are investigated, for both the claimant count and the ILO measures of unemployment, using logistic regression analysis. Our results show that recent white and nonwhite immigrant men experience much higher levels of unemployment than earlier cohorts. For whites, this effect is transitory, whereas for nonwhites unemployment rates adjust more slowly as the duration of stay increases. Immigrant unemployment rates also vary considerably with country of birth.     

经济新常态下就业困难群体失业趋势研究*

本文探讨了宏观经济运行新特征对就业困难群体失业的影响。研究发现城镇失业与平均工资显著正相关,与财政支出、一年期贷款利率和平均受教育年限显著负相关,与经济增长率和全要素生产率等无显著相关性。“4050”人员、刚毕业大学生和青年农民工是三类重点困难群体,失业趋势呈现长期失业加重、失业转就业难度增大和短期失业淤积。本文建议将“就业困难群体就业比较充分”作为就业工作的重要目标,多措并举,妥善应对新常态下的失业问题。     

Work incentives and other effects of the transition to social assistance: Evidence from the Slovak Republic

In this paper we investigate whether the potential disincentive effects of the Slovak benefit system have an actual meaning. Using data from subsequent labour force surveys we study the determinants of the outflow from unemployment to a job and the determinants of the outflow to out of the labour force. We find that single unemployed, highly educated unemployed and unemployed living in the capital Bratislava have higher exit rates both to a job and to out of the labour force. The characteristic with a distinctly different effect on both exit rates is the previous labour market position We also find that there are fluctuations in the hazard rate over the duration of unemployment. However, these fluctuations are not very informative. The direct indicators of the type of unemployment benefit do not affect the exit rates, neither do the indirect indicators like, for example, the presence of young children. Although there are potential disincentive effects in the Slovak benefit system we find no evidence that these potential effects materialise.     

Search in cities

The aim of this paper is to expose the recent developments of urban search models which incorporate a land market into a search-matching framework. Using these models, we will be able to explain why unemployment rates vary within a city, how city structure affects workers’ labor-market outcomes, how unemployment benefits and the job-destruction rate affect the growth of cities and why workers living far away from job centers search less intensively and experience higher unemployment rates than those residing closer to jobs. We are also able to explain why, as compared to whites, black workers spend more time commuting to work but travel less miles and search for jobs over a smaller area.     

Female employment and occupational changes in the 1990s: How is the EU performing relative to the US?

This paper provides a comparison of the incidence and composition of female employment both in the EU and in the US. Despite a significant increase in female labour market participation in the EU, about 50% of the difference between the employment rates in the US and the EU can still be attributed to differences in the educational attainments and the employment rates of women aged 25–54. We highlight the main features of female employment in both areas, paying particular attention to the differences across age cohorts and educational levels. Our main findings are as follows: (i) the educational level of the EU female population is slowly converging to that of the US across age cohorts, (ii) the employment rates of less educated women are much lower in the EU than in the US (with the exceptions of the Scandinavian countries) even for women aged 25–34, and (iii) occupational segregation is lower for the younger highly educated women who seem to be entering more typically male occupations and less typically female occupations, although at a higher rate in the US than in the EU.     

HAPPY PEOPLE ARE LESS LIKELY TO BE UNEMPLOYED: PSYCHOLOGICAL EVIDENCE FROM PANEL DATA

There is a large literature showing that unemployment reduces people's well‐being. Yet little is known about the reverse possibility, namely that well‐being itself may influence unemployment propensity. Understanding the potentials of human well‐being in relation to unemployment is important as many developed countries are currently facing high unemployment rates. As well‐being is likely to be endogenous, we use British panel data and implement Lewbel's novel empirical approach for identification. We show that higher well‐being implies a negative causal effect on the probability of being unemployed. The result holds for two very different well‐being measures: life satisfaction and a 12‐item scale of mental health. As such, it provides new empirical evidence on the causal link between well‐being and unemployment propensity. (JEL D03, I31)     

Real option,human capital investment returns and higher educational policy

This paper incorporates the concept of real option into a modified Harris–Todaro model to investigate the relationship between higher education and unemployment rates. We found that the real option value of waiting to invest in graduate school education will decrease when the expected wage rate of labors with an undergraduate degree becomes relatively lower than that with a graduate degree. As a result, more undergraduate students will decide to go to graduate schools immediately after graduation. As the supply of labors with a graduate degree increases and the job creations fail to meet the increasing demand, those who cannot get a graduate-level job will be willing to accept job offers lower than their education level. Our modified Harris–Todaro model shows that it will lead to an increase in the number of unemployed and underemployed higher educated labors. This explains why the unemployment rates for higher educated labor are relatively high in some developed countries.     

Migration and Labour Market Adjustment: Empirical evidence from Finland 1985‐90

This paper addresses the question of the role of migration as an adjustment process by analysing the relationship between unemployment and labour force mobility. The empirical analysis deals with long-distance migration in Finland in the period 1985-90. When considered within a multivariate setting in which personal and place characteristics are held constant, the results show that higher origin unemployment rates increase outmigration, but not particularly for unemployed workers. Three outcomes are deduced from the results. First, the equilibrating process of interregional migration is slow-although working in the right direction-and becomes steadily slower as regional unemployment differentials fall. Secondly, the size of high-unemployment regions, as measured in terms of the labour force, decreases during the adjustment process as employed persons also leave the region. Thirdly, high-unemployment regions in particular lose their young and educated workers. The danger of the process of cumulative causation is great in these regions.     

Long run trends in unemployment and labor force participation in urban China

Unemployment rates in countries across the world are strongly correlated with GDP. China is an unusual outlier from the pattern, whose official government statistics show abnormally low, and suspiciously stable, unemployment rates relative to its GDP. This paper reports estimates of China’s unemployment rate for its local urban Hukou population using a more reliable, nationally representative dataset for that population than in prior work, and which spans a longer period of history than in the past literature. The unemployment rates we calculate differ dramatically from those supplied in official data and are much more consistent with what is known about key historical developments in China’s labor market. The rate averaged 3.7% in 1988–1995, when the labor market was highly regulated and dominated by state-owned enterprises, but rose sharply during the period of mass layoff from 1995 to 2002, reaching an average of 9.5% in the subperiod from 2002 to 2009. The rates were even higher when demographic composition is held fixed. We can also calculate labor force participation rates, which are not available in official statistics at all. We find that they declined throughout the whole period, particularly in 1995–2002 when the unemployment rate increased most significantly. We also find that the impacts of these changes fell most heavily on the unskilled (women, those with less education, and younger individuals). Finally, estimates of unemployment and labor force participation rates are also provided for all urban residents, including migrants without local urban Hukou, and show the same patterns of change over time.     

The Nature of Unemployment among Young Men in Urban Ethiopia

This paper investigates the nature of unemployment among young men in urban Ethiopia and finds that it is concentrated among relatively well‐educated first‐time job seekers who aspire to a public sector job and spend on average close to four years in unemployment. This is consistent with a segmented labor market model where youngsters queue in unemployment for a good job, as confirmed by an empirical test of the theoretical prediction. We observe a negative (causal) relationship between household welfare and both the incidence and duration of unemployment, indicating that unemployment is concentrated among the relatively worse off urban households, which from a national perspective represent the middle classes, and find suggestive evidence that part of this effect is due to malnutrition during childhood. Job search through social networks is only effective after one has become unemployed, suggesting that networks provide insurance only after exposure to the risk.     

对中国“知识失业”成因的一个解释

许多国家的经验表明,在教育快速发展的过程中往往伴随着“知识失业”。近年来,我国在经历教育快速发展的同时,也开始面临这样的问题。本文以扩展的工作搜寻模型为框架,分析了当前“知识失业”产生的原因。根据分析结果,现阶段出现的“知识失业”,在很大程度上是由劳动力市场的制度性分割引起的,因此应该逐步消除劳动力市场的制度性分割,鼓励大学毕业生到西部和农村等次要劳动力市场上就业,在确定高等教育的发展规模时要适当考虑劳动力市场的发育状况。     

Unemployment duration and workers' wage aspirations in Spain

This paper examines unemployed workers' declared willingness to work for wages lower than the one adequate for their qualification. We analyze which personal and economic characteristics determine this willingness and how it changes along the individuals' unemployment spells. The main results are: (i) Young workers, less educated and those living in regions or times of high unemployment are more willing to accept reduced wages while married women with a working husband are much less willing to do so; (ii) Once the individual fixed effect is controlled for, the willingness to work for reduced wages increases with the duration of unemployment; (iii) Not having access to unemployment benefits increases the probability that initially unwilling workers become willing to accept reduced wages.     

The Prospect of Migration,Sticky Wages,and “Educated Unemployment”

An increase in the probability of work abroad, where the returns to schooling are higher than at home, induces more individuals in a developing country to acquire education, which leads to an increase in the supply of educated workers in the domestic labor market. Where there is a sticky wage rate, the demand for labor at home will be constant. With a rising supply and constant demand, the rate of unemployment of educated workers in the domestic labor market will increase. Thus, the prospect of employment abroad causes involuntary “educated unemployment” at home. A government that is concerned about “educated unemployment” and might therefore be expected to encourage unemployed educated people to migrate will nevertheless, under certain conditions, elect to restrict the extent of the migration of educated individuals.     

The Turkish wage curve: Evidence from the Household Labor Force Survey

This paper examines the Turkish wage curve using individual data from the Household Labor Force Survey including 26 NUTS-2 regions over the period 2005-2008. We find an unemployment elasticity of −0.099, with a higher elasticity for younger, less educated, less experienced and female workers.     

Argentina: Macroeconomic Crisis and Household Vulnerability*

Using panel data from the Argentine Permanent Household Survey, this paper analyzes which households were more vulnerable to the Argentine macroeconomic crisis during 1999–2002. Results suggest that the impact of the crisis was not uniform across households, which differed in their ability to cope with shocks. In particular, households with more children, and whose head was male, less educated, and employed in the private sector were the most vulnerable, suffering larger than average declines in income. Shocks to labor income were significant, with both unemployment rates and unemployment spells increasing throughout the period, particularly during the peak of the crisis towards the end of 2001. Individuals with low levels of human capital (proxied by education and experience), males, and self‐employed were more likely to lose their jobs. Public sector employees, in contrast, were more protected from the impact of the crisis on employment.     

Exact Unemployment Rate Indices

Conventional unemployment rate measures tend to overestimate the degree of labor underutilization if unemployment disproportionately affects less educated and generally less productive workers. Based on index number theory as well as on econometric techniques, this article proposes a number of alternative measures that are exact for specific labor aggregator functions. The results for the United States show that the conventional, unweighted unemployment rate overestimates the true rate by about 0.6 of a percentage point, or by almost 14%.     

Couple Formation in France: The Changing Importance of Labor Market Early Career Path

This article shows that couple formation and labor market early career path (as measured by unemployment, insecure employment, and characteristics of the first job) are intrinsically linked. We use data from the 1997 ‘Jeunes et Carrières’ survey to consider the experience of two different generations. We show that, with the arrival of mass unemployment, labor market early career path has become an important factor in couple formation, while the effect of education has diminished for young men in recent cohorts. The rise of the two-earner couple has gone hand-in-hand with greater symmetry between men and women in terms of couple formation: specifically, unemployment now reduces couple formation for both sexes. Some more traditional aspects persist however: (i) Women who are inactive on the labor market form couples earlier than do other women; (ii) Low wages in the first job encourage (discourage) couple formation for women (men); (iii) Higher education favors men's couple formation, but not that of working women; and (iv) Temporary work does not discourage couple formation by women. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.