Job Displacement and the Duration of Joblessness: The Role of Spatial Mismatch

Abstract

This paper explores rich longitudinal data to gain a better understanding of the importance of spatial mismatch in lower-paid workers' job search. The data infrastructure at our disposal allows us to investigate the impact on a variety of job search-related outcomes of localized and individual-specific job accessibility measures using identification strategies that mitigate the impact of residential self-selection. Our results suggest that better access to jobs causes a statistically significant, but modest decrease in the duration of joblessness among lowerpaid displaced workers, while an abundance of competing searchers for those jobs increases duration modestly. Search durations for older workers, Hispanic workers, and those displaced from manufacturing jobs are especially sensitive to job accessibility. * NOTE: An earlier version of this paper was prepared for the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association meetings, January 2011. Any opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Department of Treasury or the U.S. Census Bureau. All results have been reviewed to ensure that no confidential information is disclosed. The authors want to thank Sheharyar Bokhari for his valuable research assistance, participants at various seminars and conferences for their suggestions, and Kevin McKinney and Ron Jarmin for their comments on an earlier draft.

Opportunities and competition in thick labor markets: Evidence from plant closures

“…With an average of 171 days in unemployment after a firm closure, this is equal to a reduction of 8.2%. Notably, this result lies in the range of 5% and 9% that Andersson et al (2018) obtain in their main specification. When inserting closing firm fixed effects in column (8), the coefficient becomes insignificant as a result of the loss in statistical power.…”

“…The authors find that employment chances rise with the size of a worker's old industry and decline with the presence of different but skill-related industries. As with Détang-Dessendre and Gaigné (2009) and Andersson et al (2018), one shortcoming of their paper is that the authors do not control for unobserved heterogeneity between workers.…”

“…One exception is DiAddario (2011), who finds that the local degree of agglomeration raises the hazard rate of unemployed workers in Italy. 4 The only two papers which explicitly address the competing roles of labor supply and labor demand within local labor markets are the ones by Détang-Dessendre and Gaigné (2009) and Andersson, Haltiwanger, Kutzbach, Pollakowski, and Weinberg (2018). 5 Both estimate hazard models with a measure of regional job accessibility as the independent variable, where the number of available jobs is discounted by geographical distance or travel time as 2 On the labor demand side, firms should therefore benefit from lower vacancy times in cities as a result of better access to suitable workers (Moretti, 2011;Rosenthal & Strange, 2001).…”

“…More precisely, the focus on one single unemployment spell per worker has inhibited the use of individual fixed effects in Détang-Dessendre and Gaigné (2009) and Andersson et al (2018). This is problematic if unobserved worker characteristics are correlated with local labor market conditions (Glaeser, 1996).…”

Closing Poverty-Based Excellence Gaps: Conceptual, Measurement, and Educational Issues

“…For example, some acceleration options may involve a need for transportation, yet economically vulnerable students may not have access to easy or reliable transportation beyond their neighborhood (Andersson, Haltiwanger, Kutzbach, Pollakowski, & Weinberg, 2014;Kneebone, 2014). Plucker and Harris (2015) also cautioned that there are legitimate questions about whether certain strategies can work with this population of talented students.…”