What Should I Be When I Grow Up? Occupations and Unemployment over the Life Cycle

Martin Gervais, Nir Jaimovich, Henry E. Siu and Yaniv Yedid-Levi

No 20628, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Why is unemployment higher for younger individuals? We address this question in a frictional model of the labor market that features learning about occupational fit. In order to learn the occupation in which they are most productive, workers sample occupations over their careers. Because young workers are more likely to be in matches that represent a poor occupational fit, they spend more time in transition between occupations. Through this mechanism, our model can replicate the observed age differences in unemployment which, as in the data, are due to differences in job separation rates.

JEL-codes: E0 J0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-lab, nep-lma and nep-mac
Note: EFG
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Published as Martin Gervais & Nir Jaimovich & Henry E. Siu & Yaniv Yedid-Levi, 2016. "What Should I Be When I Grow Up? Occupations and Unemployment over the Life Cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, .

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Journal Article: What should I be when I grow up? Occupations and unemployment over the life cycle (2016)
Working Paper: What Should I Be When I Grow Up? Occupations and Unemployment over the Life Cycle (2014)
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