Josef Zweimüller, University of Zurich

Duration Dependence in Finding a Job: Applications, Job Interviews, and Job Offers (with Jeremy Zuchuat, Rafael Lalive, Aderonke Osikominu, Lorenzo Pesaresi)

Abstract: The job finding rate declines with the duration of unemployment. While this is an old and well established fact, it is still not well understood. Our paper makes two contributions. The first is empirical. We use "monthly search diaries", a novel data source collected by Swiss public employment offices. A monthly search diary records all applications sent by a job seekers; and it indicates – for each single application – whether the employer followed up with a job interview and/or a job offer. Based on more than 600,000 applications sent by 15,000 job seekers, we find negative duration dependence in applications; negative duration dependence in job interviews; but positive duration dependence in job offers (conditional on a job interview).

Our second contribution is theoretical. We rationalize our empirical findings in a model of statistical discrimination, incorporating not only workers’ search decisions but also employers’ interview- and job-offer decisions. Our model captures the empirical duration patterns surprisingly well. We also provide a comprehensive discussion of our evidence in light of other theories explaining duration dependence in unemployment such as: taste discrimination against the long-term unemployed, stock-flow matching, depletion of a job seeker’s personal network, and changes in application targeting/quality over time.