JOB SEARCH METHODS, INTENSITY AND EFFECTS

Detailed survey evidence is used to examine the process of job search and, in particular, the methods and intensity of such search and the effectiveness of these decisions. Data were collected in a survey of just over 1,000 unemployed persons conducted in the UK in September 1982, at which time the UK unemployment rate was 13.8%. No good evidence is found of increasing returns to search. Rather, in interpreting job contacts as the intermediate output of a search process, the model with total hours of search is very close to linear in intensity. When disaggregated according to search method, no significantly increasing and convex relationships are found. No dramatic differences are found in the search intensity and methods choices of various groups in the population. Even for the long-term unemployed, the pattern of these choices and the related reservation wage are not very different from that in the sample of the stock as a whole. The results suggest a potential rejection of the hypothesis that differential market outcomes result primarily from systematically different choices by different categories of the unemployed.