Personality traits and unemployment: Evidence from longitudinal data

Abstract

ABSTRACT. This study contributes to the literature on how personality is related to labour market success by providing evidence on the relationship between personality traits and unemployment. After accounting for reverse causality and measurement error, our results suggest that higher openness was associated with increased cumulative unemployment at the prime working age. It seems that this connection occurs because individuals with higher openness enter into unemployment spells more frequently -not because their unemployment spells would be particularly long.

Involuntary job loss and changes in personality traits

“…Viinikainen and Kokko (2012) show that higher openness is associated with an increased cumulative duration of unemployment over the life course. They find that individuals with higher scores on openness are more likely to experience more frequent unemployment spells.…”

“…Existing research shows that openness is associated with increased unemployment duration, which might partly stem from selection into more insecure jobs or the possibility that open individuals are more likely to accept job offers that deviate significantly from their previous position (Uysal and Pohlmeier, 2011;Viinikainen and Kokko, 2012). Studies in this stream of literature focus on unemployment experience, on the unemployment level in general, and on the duration of unemployment, which all might indicate potential channels of the effect of job loss on personality traits.…”

Adolescent conscientiousness predicts lower lifetime unemployment.

“…For this reason we used parallel path analysis. Our mediation analysis was implemented using the khb procedure in Stata (Kohler, Bernt Karlson, & Holm, 2011), which adjusts for the rescaling issues which occur when attempting cross-model comparisons of non-linear models and can provide an Model 2: Unemployment from age 16 to 38it = 0 + 1 adolescent personalityi + ∑2 childhood factorsi + 3 yeart + 4 academic motivationi + 5 educationi + εit Lastly, we conducted analyses testing three alternative unemployment outcomes used in Viinikainen and Kokko (2012). These were the total duration of unemployment in months, the number of spells of unemployment, and length of unemployment spells among those who experienced at least one spell (see Supplementary Materials, Section 4).…”

“…In order to provide further insight on the nature of the relationship between personality and unemployment, we conducted analyses using three alternative unemployment outcome measures modelled on those used in previous research (Viinikainen & Kokko, 2012). We examined (i) the total months of unemployment experienced from age 16 to 38 (M = 4.34, SD = 16.9, Range = 0-267), (ii) the number of spells of unemployment experienced from age 16…”

Labor market performance of dropouts: the role of personality

“…Connections have been documented between personality characteristics and years of schooling (for a review, see Almlund et al, 2011), the probability of obtaining a degree (Almlund et al, 2011;Carneiro et al, 2007;Coleman and DeLeire, 2003) and the probability of dropping out (Báron and Cobb-Clark, 2010;Coneus et al, 2008;Segal, 2006). In terms of labor market outcomes, significant linkages have been found between personality characteristics and earnings, occupational choices, labor force participation and employment (for example, Borghans et al, 2008;Bowles et al, 2001a,b;Braakmann, 2009;Heckman et al, 2006;Heineck, 2011;Linz and Semykina, 2009;Mueller and Plug, 2006;Nyhus and Pons, 2005;Osborne Groves, 2005;Semykina and Linz, 2007;Uysal and Pohlmeier, 2011;Viinikainen et al, 2010;Viinikainen and Kokko, 2012).…”