The cumulative disadvantage of unemployment: Longitudinal evidence across gender and age at first unemployment in Germany

Anna Manzoni () and Irma Mooi-Reci

PLOS ONE, 2020, vol. 15, issue 6, 1-20

Abstract: Unemployment is an important predictor of one’s future employment success. Yet, much about the endurance of unemployment effects on workers’ careers remains poorly understood. Our study complements this knowledge gap by examining the rate of recovery in the quality of careers following an unemployment spell among a representative sample of previously unemployed workers with different socio-demographic characteristics in Germany. We apply a new dynamic measure that quantifies the quality of binary sequences, distinguishing between “good” (i.e., employment) from “bad” labor force status activities (i.e., unemployment and inactivity). We use longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) before the Great Financial Recession over the period 1984–2005 and deploy a series of hybrid models that control for unobserved heterogeneity. We find a non-linear recovery process after unemployment across gender and age groups. That is, after a period of recovery, career quality worsens. Least impacted are men experiencing unemployment when aged between 25–34 years, while men 55–66 have rather stable, though stronger, penalties. Furthermore, we find that recovery processes are contingent upon when respondents experience unemployment.

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0234786 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 34786&type=printable (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:plo:pone00:0234786

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0234786

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().