A Randomized Experiment on Improving Job Search Skills of Older Unemployed Workers

Nynke de Groot and Bas van der Klaauw

No 21464, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Active labor market programs targeted at older unemployed workers are often believed to be ineffective. We exploit a large-scale randomized experiment involving approximately 50,000 older unemployed workers to evaluate an intensive job search assistance program that focuses on exploiting the social network. Participation in the program increases exits from unemployment insurance by 4.4 percentage points. Program participation reduces cumulative benefit payments by about €715, exceeding the program costs of €470. Participants compensate the reduced benefits receipt with higher earnings. We find that participants change their job search behavior according to the content of the program, and that both the trainer and the training group composition affect the program effectiveness.

Keywords: Randomized; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 J14 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-05
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21464 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21464

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21464

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().