Essay preview
Internet Job Search and the Effect on Unemployment Duration
Abstract
Jobseeker behavior changed in 1990's with the introduction of non-traditional methods of searching for a job such as the Internet. Online search methods have replaced many of the traditional methods of searching for a job. In August 2000, one in four unemployed U.S. job seekers reported that they use the Internet as a method of searching for employment. Which types of persons used the Internet as a primary source to search for a job, and did searching for work online help find new jobs faster? These questions are addressed by evaluating data of unemployment durations during the last twenty years from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Job search methods of unemployed workers changed in the 1990's with the introduction of online job search methods. Prior to that, the primary methods of searching for a job were by traditional methods such as the newspaper, friends, relatives, etc. There are currently thousands of online job search sites that are used by an increasingly amount of unemployed workers. The use of Internet and recruiting sites is generally free of cost for searchers and usually cheaper for firms compared to traditional print advertisements. Job searchers can view job listings as well as company information with relative ease and have potential job matches sent to them directly via E-mail.
According to the Current Population Survey, about 19.6 million individuals, or 9.2 percent of the civilian non-institutional population ages 16 and over, reported using the Internet to search for a job between January 2001 and September 2001. Men and women were about equally likely to have used the Internet to search for a job and nearly 1 in every 10 reported using the Internet to look for a job. Similarly, about 9 percent of both whites and blacks used the Internet in their job search, but fewer than 6 percent of Hispanic individuals used these resources. Persons aged 20 to 34 years were most likely to use the Internet to look for a job. Among those aged 20 to 24, a little more than 17 percent used the Internet as part of their search for work, as did a little fewer than 17 percent of 25 to 34 year olds. In contrast, between 6 and 7 percent of teenagers and workers aged 35 and over looked for a job using the Internet.
Given the importance of job search to both employees and employers, it is not surprising that the topic has been the subject of a good deal of research. Older literature on this topic include Holzer (1987, 1988), Bortnick and Ports (1991), Osberg (1993) and Addison and Portugal (2001) compare the job-finding rates of unemployed workers using a variety of search methods such as friends and relatives, newspaper ads, private employment offices, and inquiring at the work place and how long unemployed workers spent looking for a job. With the exception of Bortnick and Ports (1991), they all found that the most effective resource for finding employment was through friends and relatives. Bortnick and Ports (1991) found that the most successful method for finding employment was by using private employment agencies.
One recent study related to my research, conducted by Kuhn and Skuterud (2000), looked at the process by which jobseekers choose to use Internet methods to look for work; and second, to estimate the causal effect of incorporating the Internet into the...