Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP18360
Authors: Oriana Bandiera; Vittorio Bassi; Robin Burgess; Imran Rasul; Munshi Sulaiman; Anna Vitali
Abstract: There are 420 million young people in Africa today. Understanding how youth search for jobs and what affects their ability to find good jobs is of paramount importance. We do so using a field experiment tracking young job seekers for six years in Uganda's main cities. We examine how two standard labor market interventions impact their search for good jobs: vocational training, vocational training combined with matching youth to firms, and matching only. Training is offered in sectors with high quality firms. The matching intervention assigns workers for interviews with such firms. At baseline, unskilled youth are optimistic about their job prospects, especially over the job offer arrival rate from high quality firms. Those offered vocational training become even more optimistic, search more intensively and direct their search towards high quality firms. However, youth additionally offered matching become discouraged because call back rates from firm owners are far lower than their prior. As a result, they search less intensively and direct their search towards lower quality firms. These divergent expectations and search behaviors have persistent impacts: vocational trainees without match offers achieve greater labor market success, largely because they end up employed at higher quality firms than youth additionally offered matching. Our analysis highlights the foundational but separate roles of skills and expectations in job search, how interventions cause youth to become optimistic or discouraged, and how this matters for long run sorting and individual labor market outcomes.
Keywords: job search; vocational training; expectations; field experiment; Uganda
JEL Codes: J64; O12
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| job seekers' optimism regarding job offer arrival rates (J68) | more intensive job searches directed towards higher quality firms (J68) |
| lower than expected callback rates (L96) | discouragement (D80) |
| discouragement (D80) | less intensive job searches (J68) |
| discouragement (D80) | focus on lower quality firms (L15) |
| vocational trainees without matching (M53) | better labor market outcomes (J48) |
| matching (C78) | smaller increase in index of labor market success (J79) |
| vocational training (M53) | job seekers' optimism regarding job offer arrival rates (J68) |
| vocational training (M53) | more intensive job searches directed towards higher quality firms (J68) |
| matching (C78) | lower than expected callback rates (L96) |
| vocational training (M53) | index of labor market success (J68) |