Stimulating Occupational Mobility among Unemployed Job Seekers

The paper presented in this ZEW Research Seminar studies the impact of online information provision to job seekers who are looking for work in occupations with relatively poor labor market prospects. The information is provided through a personalized email containing suggestions about suitable alternative occupations and how the prospects of these alternatives compare to the job seekers’ current occupation of interest. A second treatment adds a motivational video aimed at addressing the psychological hurdles of switching to a different occupation. They evaluate the interventions using a randomized field experiment with 30,129 unemployed job seekers, and they acquire additional descriptive information on beliefs and job search. They find no impact on received benefits and earnings in the first eight months after the treatment. Their findings do indicate that treated individuals are more likely to find jobs in occupations different from their initial occupation of interest, which may be promising for their longer-term prospects.