Roland Rathelot, CREST, ENSAE, IPParis

"How do women and men search for jobs?"

Abstract

We use data on job views and applications on the largest job board in Sweden, Platsbanken. We merge this data with employment and unemployment registers. We document gender differentials in job search and analyse how they map to differentials in labour-market outcomes. Comparing unemployed job seekers with similar characteristics, we find that women apply to less jobs than men, and target jobs that pay less and are closer to home. Women and men have similar job-finding rates, and women do get jobs that pay less and are closer to home. We expand a simple search-and-matching framework to interpret our results, and show that these results can only be explained by a combination of factors: women and men need to differ in valuation given to non-wage amenities, search costs, and unemployment value to account for the full set of empirical findings. The fact that gender gaps do not vary with time spent in unemployment indicate that differential over-optimism is unlikely to be a key explanation for the gender wage gap.

(Joint with Lena Hensvik and Thomas Le Barbanchon)

Contact person: Daphné Jocelyne Skandalis