Reaching Marginalized Job Seekers Through Public Employment Services: Experimental Evidence from Ethiopia

Marc J. Witte (), Johanna Roth (), Morgan Hardy () and Christian Johannes Meyer ()
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Marc J. Witte: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Johanna Roth: Sciences Po
Morgan Hardy: New York University, Abu Dhabi
Christian Johannes Meyer: University of Oxford

No 18005, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We present findings from an at-scale randomized trial of a government program providing public employment services in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with up-to-date vacancy information. Before the program, women with relatively less education searched more narrowly with worse labor market outcomes than the rest of our representative sample of relevant job seekers. These women also have lower direct intervention take-up than the rest of the sample. However, only these women significantly increase applications, receive more offers, shift from household enterprise work to wage employment, and experience higher earnings in response to the intervention. These employment impacts are larger than can be explained by vacancies directly curated through the intervention. Instead, these women adjust search behavior, expectations, and employment aspirations more broadly. Notably, offers come through friends and family networks, their modal baseline search method, underscoring the potential role of social networks in disseminating employment information to the most marginalized job seekers.

Keywords: marginalized job seekers; labor market frictions; public employment services; randomized controlled trial (RCT) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J08 J16 J64 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-07
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