Mismatch Unemployment and Local Labour-Market Efficiency: The Role of Employer and Vacancy Characteristics

Abstract

IntroductionConventional labour-market research and policies have highlighted deficiencies in the skills and other supply-side characteristics of job seekers as major causes of difficulties in filling job vacancies and of unemployment. However, the importance of employer and vacancy characteristics in prolonging vacancy duration in local labour markets has been given less consideration. These need to be more fully considered in order to provide additional understanding of their causes so as to increase the speed of flow of job seekers into new employment and reduce the costs to employers of unfilled vacancies.One set of standard explanations for persistent unemployment has particularly focused on the supply side (CEC, 1994; OECD, 1994;. In the context of the United Kingdom the supply-side approach to improving international competitiveness is rooted in the argument that one of the fundamental economic constraints is an inflexible, lowskilled, low-mobility labour force, and that this represents a key supply-side constraint to economic growth which should be addressed through long-term investment in human capital (for example, DfEE, 1996a;1996b). However, while supply-side issues are important, after nearly two decades of supply-side-orientated labour-market policy in the United Kingdom, unemployment in many local labour markets remains high and persistent, and competitive models have had only partial success in explaining involuntary, cyclical, or structural unemployment (Manning, 1995).Supply-side policies such as the New Deal in the United Kingdom have been criticised for failure to take account of local demand-side conditions (Campbell and

Unemployed Job Seeker Attitudes towards Potential Travel‐to‐Work Times

“…This limits the number and range of job opportunities within a given search or commuting range (Holzer 1991;Ong and Blumenberg 1998). The attitudes and practices of local employers and the characteristics of the neighborhood economy may also limit opportunities for local job seekers (Adams et al 2000;Preston and McLafferty 1999). So the ability or willingness of unemployed people to travel further to a potential job will affect the level of mismatch between job seekers and jobs and hence unemployment rates and incomes (Gabriel and Rosenthal 1996).…”

Alternative Job Search Strategies in Remote Rural and Peri‐urban Labour Markets: The Role of Social Networks

“…Adams et al (2000Adams et al ( , 2002 have noted the potential for 'information mismatch' problems when employers and job seekers each use inappropriate or different search channels when looking for staff or jobs respectively. An over-reliance, by employers in particular, on informal practices can therefore further exclude disadvantaged groups already more prone to unemployment, and 'lock out' long-term unemployed people, who tend to have more limited access to social networks (Adams et al 2002).…”

“…Exit information was not gathered from interview respondents, all of whom remained registered as unemployed at the time of contact. A range of factors may have impacted on the outcomes eventually experienced by these job seekers, including the attitudes and recruitment methods of local employers (Adams et al 2000;). However, if policy makers are to develop services for the unemployed that provide access to accurate and up-to-date vacancy information, while also potentially allowing job seekers to expand their social networks, it is important that they have a clear idea of the role of both formal and informal methods of job seeking, and the relationship between the two.…”

Job search success and employability in local labor markets

“…); vacancy characteristic factors (remuneration, conditions of work, working hours, and prevalence of shift work, opportunities for progression, extent of part-time, temporary, and casual work, availability of "entry-level" positions if appropriate, etc. ); and recruitment factors, which may lead to frictional mismatch (including employers' formal recruitment and selection procedure and general selection preferences, employer discrimination, and the form and extent of employers' use of informal networks, see Adams et al 2000). However, demand should ideally be measured in more sensitive ways, such as types of labor required by local employers rather than simply, for instance, local aggregate demand.…”

“…"Structural" or "skills mismatch" can arise where job seekers are not seen by employers as having the necessary skills (Manacorda and Petrongolo 1999) or where job seekers fail to move to other geographic or occupational labor markets where their skills may be sought. "Frictional mismatch" within a local labor market can result from different employer and job seeker expectations combined with an asymmetry of information between them (Adams et al 2000). The "spatial mismatch" hypothesis argues that groups of people who reside in certain areas due, for example, to racial discrimination or inflexible housing tenure, have a limited number and range of job opportunities and hence a lower likelihood of getting a job match (Holzer 1991;Brueckner and Martin 1997).…”