Tag
labor_market_frictions
7 findings
Labour & employmentDual-Sided Over-Optimism in Labor Market Fundamentals75% of firm managers overestimate the cognitive ability of tertiary-educated applicants (perceiving a tertiary Raven score premium $>4\times$ the actual difference of 5.3 vs 5.0 questions); 55% of high-school jobseekers expect permanent employment within 1 year compared to 5.8% actual observed employment.Observational StudyLabour & employmentFirm Net Return on On-the-Job Soft Skills TrainingTreated workers became 20 percent more productive (10.8 percentage point efficiency gain, p < 0.05) after program completion, while wages increased by only 0.5 percent ($0.50 USD/month). Program costs were $95,000 for 1,087 treated workers, producing a net return to the firm of 73 percent at program completion and 258 percent 8 months post-completion.RCTLabour & employmentHost-Refugee Labor Market Friction AsymmetryCash transfers increased Syrian wage employment by 5.2 percentage points at 2 months (p = 0.017) and 3.8 percentage points at 4 months (p = 0.027), while raising earnings by 65%. In contrast, cash had no significant effect on Jordanians (-0.007 at 2 months, -0.025 at 4 months), as Jordanians had 25% higher baseline daily expenditure, searched 30% more intensely, and filed twice as many job applications in the control group.RCTLabour & employmentNetwork Inequality PerpetuationInformal networks account for 30–60% of jobs in the US and 45% of jobs in the Kolkata labor sample, creating substantial long-run inequality risks across socio-demographic groups if uncountered by meritocratic screening.Expert TheoryLabour & employmentNon-Skill Labor Market BarriersEmpirical results are forthcoming as the evaluation is ongoing, while baseline survey data highlights that 56% of Indian employers face hiring difficulties and 2.3% of the workforce holds formal skilling.Expert TheoryLabour & employmentPublic Skill CertificationJob seekers who received public branded certificates were 5.2 percentage points more likely to be employed, increased total hours worked by 20%, and earned US$130 over 3 months (generating an earnings gain 5.6 times greater than the per-participant program cost).RCTLabour & employmentExternal Market Unobservability of General Soft SkillsDespite a 20 percent productivity increase (10.8 percentage point efficiency gain, p < 0.05), post-program long-run worker turnover showed zero differential retention or attrition (0.620 percentage points, p > 0.10) and wage increases remained negligible (0.492 percent, p < 0.10), proving that soft skills are unpriced by external labor markets due to unobservability.RCT