Digital Tools to Facilitate Job Search
(Joint seminar with CESS)
This paper investigates how online job search assistance affects the labor market performance of unemployed workers. We report results from a randomized controlled trial among the universe of unemployment benefit recipients in Denmark. In the experiment, we exogenously vary the content of an online dashboard on the central web platform of the Danish public employment agency. Treatments differ in whether job seekers are provided with information about the number of vacancies in the job seeker’s preferred occupations, information about suitable alternative occupations, or both. We find that the provision of vacancy information has a positive impact on job seekers’ employment and earnings in the year after the intervention. Occupational recommendations also have positive, but rather transitory effects on labor market outcomes of treated job seekers. We examine which subgroups of job seekers benefit most strongly from our treatments and discuss implications for the design of digital job search assistance programs.

Please sign up for meetings here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JCU5l6ELVTtTGnGAvCRudlRHwmLpizIevH_cXtX0lk0/edit#gid=0
Date: 2 March 2021, 16:00 (Tuesday, 7th week, Hilary 2021)
Venue: Held on Zoom
Speaker: Steffen Altmann (University of Copenhagen and IZA Bonn)
Organising department: Department of Economics
Part of: Applied Microeconomics Seminar
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Melis Clark