Download
Abstract
Public employment services are increasingly using online job platforms to help unemployed job seekers find jobs. This paper shows that these policies implicitly target those who benefit the most from them. The reason is that search intensity on online job platforms is characterized by “types”: more-educated job seekers with better language and digital skills use the online job platform more intensively throughout their unemployment spell. Moreover, these high-types in online search effort are also more likely to take-up in-person job search assistance and, if they do, are more responsive to it. Using data from a public employment service, the paper provides causal evidence for the existence of types and presents a job search model to rationalize its findings.
Figure
