Losing a Job and (Dis)incentives to Move (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Geographic Mobility of Displaced Workers: Do Local Employment Conditions Matter?
2004
Using data drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and County Business Patterns, this study investigates whether displaced workers adjust their job search strategies in response to local market conditions to favor migration out of declining labor markets. Empirical results from a Cox partial-likelihood proportional hazards model are supportive. A low density of local employment and low average wage levels are associated with shorter wait times to migration. Conversely, high local employment growth rates, high wages, and low unemployment rates correlate with an increased likelihood of obtaining local employment following displacement.
Unemployment and Migration: Does Moving Help?
Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 2002
This paper studies the migration behaviour of the unemployed in Finland, and analyses the causal effect of moving on individual employment status. In 1994 17 per cent of the labour force was unemployed and the unemployment rate exhibited a very slow decline in 1994-96. Over half of those who were unemployed at the end of 1994 were still unemployed two years later. The propensity to find a job is somewhat greater among migrants. However, the positive effect of moving diminishes once other personal characteristics are accounted for. Moreover, when endogenous migrant selectivity is controlled for, an insignificant or even a negative effect on employment status emerges. This indicates that the better "quality" of the migrants (e.g. age, education, human capital and unobserved ability), rather than the act of moving itself, causes an improvement in re-employability. Hence, migration alone may not be a very effective mechanism for alleviating individual unemployment.
The effect of local ties, wages, and housing costs on migration decisions
The Journal of Socio-Economics, 2011
Previous research on migration has focused more on the effect of wage differences between the destination and the origin on migration and less on how non-pecuniary attachments workers have to their current location may affect their migration decisions. In this paper, we examine how the presence of a strong social network and desirable location amenities in the current location may deter individual migration across U.S. metropolitan areas. Our empirical results show that, controlling for wage and housing cost differences between metropolitan areas, workers with strong attachments to their current location are significantly less likely to move. Interestingly, the effects of a strong social network and desirable location amenities on individual migration decisions are more important than the effect of wage or housing cost differentials between the destination and the origin.
281 Unemployment and Migration : Does Moving Help ?
2002
This paper studies the migration behaviour of the unemployed in Finland, and analyses the causal effect of moving on individual employment status. In 1994 17 per cent of the labour force was unemployed and the unemployment rate exhibited a very slow decline in 1994-96. Over half of those who were unemployed at the end of 1994 were still unemployed two years later. The propensity to find a job is somewhat greater among migrants. However, the positive effect of moving diminishes once other personal characteristics are accounted for. Moreover, when endogenous migrant selectivity is controlled for, an insignificant or even a negative effect on employment status emerges. This indicates that the better “quality” of the migrants (e.g. age, education, human capital and unobserved ability), rather than the act of moving itself, causes an improvement in re-employability. Hence, migration alone may not be a very effective mechanism for alleviating individual unemployment.
Work-related Migration and Unemployment
Journal for Labour Market Research, 2014
dogenität der Arbeitslosen-Variable in der Migrationsgleichung zu berücksichtigen wird ein bivariates Probitmodell verwendet. Es schätzt die gemeinsame Wahrscheinlichkeit arbeitslos zu sein und umzuziehen um die Arbeitslosigkeit zu beenden. Die Ergebnisse belegen, dass die arbeitsbedingte Umzugswahrscheinlichkeit von Arbeitslosen sehr viel niedriger ist als die von Beschäftigten. Für die Arbeitssuchenden erscheinen materielle und vor allem immaterielle Umzugskosten deutlich höher auszufallen als der resultierende Umzugsnutzen. Die aus diesen Ergebnissen zu ziehenden Forderungen an die Arbeitsmarktpolitik wären die Umzugsanreize für Erwerbslose zu erhöhen, ihnen Vorschläge über entfernte Stellenangebote zu unterbreiten sowie den regionalen Austausch von Jobcentern auszubauen. Schlüsselwörter Interregionale Mobilität • Arbeitslosigkeit • Migration • Deutschland 1 Introduction The situation on the German labor market has changed for the better over the last 8-9 years. Whereas in 2005 4.9 million people were unemployed, the number decreased to 2.9 million in December 2013 (German Federal Employment Agency). Yet, the individual situation of the 3 million unemployed remains unimproved. Individual unemployment is still highly distressing and affects all areas of life. This study focuses on the possibility of ending unemployment by moving to another region for a new occupation. Most people are regionally bound to a particular area; often the family situation makes work-related moving difficult and moving is associated with high costs. However, many individuals and families overcome these obstacles successfully. The question thus arises of whether in Germany the Abstract This paper examines the willingness of the unemployed to migrate in order to exit unemployment. The empirical estimation is based on data from the German Socio Economic Panel (GSOEP) from the years 2001 to 2009. Following a bivariate probit approach, results are obtained estimating the joint probability of being unemployed and to move to account for the endogeneity of the unemployment variable in the migration equation. The findings indicate that the probability of moving to exit unemployment is much lower compared to the work related moving probability of employed people. Material and in particular immaterial migration costs for the unemployed group appear to exceed the benefit of moving. Consequently, labour market policy should increase moving incentives for the unemployed and expand the regional interchange of employment agencies.
The Effect of Migration on Wages: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
American Economic Review, 2010
The objective of this paper is to employ the Hurricane Katrina evacuation into Houston, TX as a natural experiment to estimate the effect of large scale in-migration on regional earnings. Given the characteristics of the evacuees, their influx would have caused the supply of applicants for lower skilled jobs to increase proportionately more than for higher skilled jobs. We utilize a differences-in-differences-in-differences methodology in which we compare differences in average earnings in the low-skill, non-traded goods industries to the corresponding differences in the set of high skill industries in the Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth MSAs before and after the Katrina-induced migration. Unlike previous studies, we include a measure of the post-storm increase in demand for local goods and services on the demand for labor. We find evidence that the relative average payroll in the low-skill non-tradable goods industries in Houston decreased by .7% when compared to the relative change for the same group of industries in Dallas. Our findings also suggest that failure to account for demand-side influences following the migration results in significant under-estimation of wage effects due to the shift in labor supply.
Migration Gravity, Networks, and Unemployment
SSRN Electronic Journal
We develop and estimate a theory-consistent gravity equation for interregional migration flows in the presence of unemployment. Micro-founded in a setting where search friction regulates labor market transitions, we derive a migration gravity equation for bilateral mobility that embodies a co-determined local unemployment term. As a theory of migration, our model connects directly with longstanding migration puzzles (e.g. declining internal mobility) as well as more recent developments (e.g. home bias). As a model of unemployment, a migration gravity approach uncovers novel interregional roots of local unemployment, and furnishes an unemployment sufficient statistic interpretation to the familiar multilateral migration resistance term. We empirically test the predictions of the model using U.S. county-level data on bilateral migration and unemployment rates, bilateral connectedness data such as Facebook friendship links, and instrumental variable identification based on a novel similarity index of counties' historical ethnic-composition.
Journal of Regional Science, 2003
Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, this study examines the pattern of early career job mobility and migration in a sample of young male workers. Primary interest lies in the between-job wage change accompanying job transitions as well as the extended time-profile of migrant earnings. When the sample of job transitions is partitioned by education level, contemporaneous returns are found only for workers with twelve or less years of completed schooling. In contrast, highly educated workers demonstrate significant extended returns to migration with the bulk of pecuniary rewards accruing with a lag of nearly two years. 483 *I am particularly indebted to Patricia Reagan and Bruce Weinberg for many helpful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper. The comments of several anonymous referees are also gratefully acknowledged.
The role of the housing market in the migration response to employment shocks
The United States is known for the ability of its residents to move to where the jobs are, and this has helped the nation maintain its position as the world’s top economy. Households’ decisions to move depend not only on job prospects but also on the relative cost of housing. I investigate how the housing market affects the flow of workers across cities. This occurs through at least two channels: the relative mobility of homeowners versus renters, and the relative cost of housing across markets. I use homeownership rates to measure the former, and use an index that measures house prices across metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs); the price elasticity of housing supply; and the growth rate of house prices to capture the latter. ; To show how variation in these factors affects cross-city migration, I estimate a VAR model of migration, employment, wages, house prices, and new housing supply using data from 277 U.S. MSAs for 1990–2006. The impulse response functions based on employmen...