Mismatch Unemployment and the Geography of Job Search

Ioana Marinescu and Roland Rathelot

No 22672, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Could we significantly reduce U.S. unemployment by helping job seekers move closer to jobs? Using data from the leading employment board CareerBuilder.com, we show that, indeed, workers dislike applying to distant jobs: job seekers are 35% less likely to apply to a job 10 miles away from their ZIP code of residence. However, because job seekers are close enough to vacancies on average, this distaste for distance is fairly inconsequential: our search and matching model predicts that relocating job seekers to minimize unemployment would decrease unemployment by only 5.3%. Geographic mismatch is thus a minor driver of aggregate unemployment.

JEL-codes: E24 J21 J61 J62 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab, nep-mac and nep-ure
Note: EFG LS
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Published as Ioana Marinescu & Roland Rathelot, 2018. "Mismatch Unemployment and the Geography of Job Search," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, vol 10(3), pages 42-70.

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Journal Article: Mismatch Unemployment and the Geography of Job Search (2018)
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