Job Search, Emotional Well-Being, and Job Finding in a Period of Mass Unemployment: Evidence from High-Frequency Longitudinal Data
- 1 March 2011
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Project MUSE in Brookings Papers on Economic Activity
- Vol. 2011 (1), 1-57
- https://doi.org/10.1353/eca.2011.0001
Abstract
This paper presents findings from a survey of 6,025 unemployed workers who were interviewed every week for up to 24 weeks in the fall of 2009 and winter of 2010. We find that the amount of time devoted to job search declines sharply over the spell of unemployment; we do not observe a rise in job search or job finding around the time that extended unemployment insurance (UI) benefits expire. The workers in our survey express much dissatisfaction and unhappiness with their lives, and their unhappiness rises the longer they are unemployed. The unemployed appear to be particularly sad during episodes of job search, and they report feeling more sad during job search the longer they are unemployed. We also find that in the aftermath of the Great Recession the exit rate from unemployment was low at all durations and declined gradually over the spell of unemployment. Both the amount of time devoted to job search and the reservation wage help predict early exit from UI.Keywords
This publication has 13 references indexed in Scilit:
- The Labor Market in the Great RecessionBrookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2010
- Job search and unemployment insurance: New evidence from time use dataJournal of Public Economics, 2009
- Unhappiness and UnemploymentThe Economic Journal, 1994
- Unemployment Insurance, Recall Expectations, and Unemployment OutcomesThe Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1990
- Unemployment Insurance and Unemployment SpellsEconometrica, 1990
- The Relationship Between Unemployment Spells and Reservation Wages as a Test of Search TheoryThe Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1988
- Search Method Use by Unemployed YouthJournal of Labor Economics, 1988
- Unemployment and Mental Health: Some Evidence from Panel DataThe Journal of Human Resources, 1985
- Unemployment insurance and reservation wagesJournal of Public Economics, 1984
- Search Effort in the Labor MarketThe Journal of Human Resources, 1979