Unemployment Duration and the Quality of Reemployment After Layoff as a Function of Individual Differences in Labor Market Behavior

摘要

The principal research objective of this study was to identify those individual characteristics, incentive factors and behavioral differences which determine the length of unemployment after job loss. A path analytic model was developed to explain the duration of unemployment of 185 professional and technical employees laid off by the municipal and State governments. The duration of unemployment was modeled as a function of six interdependent variable groups: (1) individual characteristics and qualifications, (2) job aspirations - the specific job the worker most wanted to find, (3) financial incentives - the financial deprivation due to lost wages and the resulting incentive to seek and accept a job; (4) job serarch behavior - the degree of activity and breadth in searching for jobs, (5) job offers; and (6) decline in the asking wage - the difference in the wage accepted relative to the wage previously earned.