The search for good jobs: evidence from a six-year field experiment in Uganda

Bandiera, Oriana, Bassi, Vittorio, Burgess, Robin ORCID: 0009-0002-1187-3248, Rasul, Imran, Sulaiman, Munshi and Vitali, Anna (2023) The search for good jobs: evidence from a six-year field experiment in Uganda. Journal of Labor Economics. ISSN 0734-306X (In Press)

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Abstract

There are 420 million young people in Africa today. Understanding how youth search for jobs and what affects their ability to find good jobs is of paramount importance. We do so using a field experiment tracking young job seekers for six years in Uganda's main cities. We examine how two standard labor market interventions impact their search for good jobs: vocational training, vocational training combined with matching youth to firms, and matching only. Training is offered in sectors with high quality firms. The matching intervention assigns workers for interviews with such firms. At baseline, unskilled youth are optimistic about their job prospects, especially over the job offer arrival rate from high quality firms. Those offered vocational training become even more optimistic, search more intensively and direct their search towards high quality firms. However, youth additionally offered matching become discouraged because call back rates from firm owners are far lower than their prior. As a result, they search less intensively and direct their search towards lower quality firms. These divergent expectations and search behaviors have persistent impacts: vocational trainees without match offers achieve greater labor market success, largely because they end up employed at higher quality firms than youth additionally offered matching. Our analysis highlights the foundational but separate roles of skills and expectations in job search, how interventions cause youth to become optimistic or discouraged, and how this matters for long run sorting and individual labor market outcomes.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/7284...
Additional Information:	© 2023 University of Chicago Press
Divisions:	Economics International Growth Centre
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor
JEL classification:	J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J6 - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies > J64 - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search O - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development > O12 - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
Date Deposited:	29 Aug 2023 14:48
Last Modified:	17 Oct 2024 18:31
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/120080

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