Prior Geographic Mobility and Job Search Length

Ernst Goss
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Ernst Goss: Salisbury State University

The Review of Regional Studies, 1988, vol. 18, issue 1, 49-54

Abstract: Research into the unemployment problem has shown that there is a wide variation in the amount of time unemployed workers take to find jobs. The analysis of the causes of this variation has occupied a position of great importance in the development and implementation of national labor market and welfare policies. Many studies of this phenomenon have focused on the impact of unemployment insurance and other government transfer payments on the length of job search. Other studies have concentrated on individual worker characteristics such as age, education level, and material and health status to explain the observed differences in this length. Search theory suggests, however, that one of the most important variables influencing search duration is the amount of information about the labor market that a worker possesses prior to the start of his or her search. In previous studies, this stock of information has been proxied by worker job experience variables, such as the number of years an individual has been in the labor force, his or her education level and age, or whether he or she regularly visits a labor exchange. These variables leave out another potentially important source of an unemployed worker's stock of information: whether or not the worker has worked in several spatially differentiated labor markets. This study proposed that knowledge of regional wage differentials and other market conditions give a worker with prior geographic mobility experience a better stock of information than one who has worked all of his or her work life in the same geographical location. It is proposed that this superior stock of information has a significant impact on the amount of time it takes an unemployed worker to locate and accept a job.

Date: 1988
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