Using data drawn from in-depth interviews collected in three Chinese cities and the countrywide China General Social Survey, this dissertation examined how people found jobs during the historic period of China’s employment system change. This dissertation is written in the format of three publishable papers. The first paper revisited China’s employment system change, by focusing on individual reactions towards the changing employment policies. Perceiving the persistent political authority, individuals pursued higher education, accumulated political advantages, and mobilized network resources, to get state-assigned jobs. Individual job-seeking strategies, in turn, boosted the state’s hiring criteria, as well as facilitated the growth of the market principle. Consequently, state power and market strength have been co-developed in this process. Following my analysis of institutional constraints, in the second paper, I addressed the question of how individual job seekers and job positions are matched together. I examined how contact use matches individual qualifications to the employer’s hiring expectations, from an innovative perspective of the certifiability of job requirements. I demonstrated that informal methods facilitate job-person matching success when used in combination with formal methods, rather than being used alone. My third dissertation paper provides strong empirical evidence of the advantages of the joint use of formal and informal methods. I found that individuals who used formal and informal job search methods jointly tend to obtain more job information and thus apply for more positions. They are also more likely to exit job search successfully within a three-month time period. Using the Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR) model, I found that the joint channel itself is more likely to lead one to late-stage career success, as indicated by one’s recent income. Above all, my dissertation systematically investigated the use of contacts in the labor market of post-socialist China, regarding its institutional constraints, working mechanisms, and advantages.

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Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This study aimed to examine the structural changes affecting the duration of unemployment across households in South Africa. It made use of existing datasets from the Labour Force Survey produced by Statistics South Africa, covering a period of six years (2011-2016). Relations among demographic and household variables were explored to determine how they related to unemployment duration. On the basis of the relations identified, a predictive analysis of unemployment duration was attempted using two-level modelling. The results suggest a significant difference in the duration of unemployment, according to the individual socio-demographic characteristics and the household moderating variables. More specifically, the greatest share percentage of both men and women experiencing long-term unemployment were found within the age group 25-34 years. The study also found that the percentage share of Non-White population groups experiencing longer duration of unemployment was more than for the White population group. Another variable found to have great influence on the duration of unemployment was the individual’s previous work experience. Going beyond the individual’s socio-demographic characteristics to consider household variables. It was found that unemployed workers living in households headed by a female are more vulnerable to longer unemployment duration. The study found individuals living in smaller households displaying longer unemployment duration. Also, it was found that individuals living in less endowed households (households where no one or few people were in gainful employment) were more vulnerable to experiencing longer unemployment spells. The study concluded with some recommendations for employment policy and follow-up research.

In my first chapter, I provide a solution for how to model bargaining when there is on-the-job search and worker turnover depends on the wage. Bargaining is a standard feature in models without on-the-jobs search, but, due to endogeneity of the match surplus, a solution does not exist when worker turnover depends on the wage. My solution is based on wages being infrequently renegotiated. With renegotiation, the equilibrium wage distribution and the bargaining outcomes are both unique and the model nests earlier models in the literature as limit cases when wages are either continuously or never renegotiated. Furthermore, the rate of renegotiation has important implications for the nature of the equilibrium. A higher rate of renegotiation lowers the response of the match duration to a wage increase, which decreases a firm's willingness to accept a higher wage. This results in a lower share of the match surplus going to the worker. Moreover, a high rate of renegotiation also lowers the positive wage spillovers from a minimum wage increase, since these spillovers rely on firms' incentives to use higher wages to reduce turnover. In the standard job ladder model, search is modelled via an employment-specific Poisson rate. The size of the Poisson rate governs the size of the search friction. The Poisson rate can represent the frequency of applications by workers or the rate at which firms post suitable vacancies. In the second chapter, which is co-authored with Jake Bradley, we set up a model which has both of these aspects. Firms infrequently post vacancies and workers occasionally apply for these vacancies. The model nests the standard job ladder model and a version of the stock-flow model as special cases while remaining analytically tractable and easy to estimate empirically from standard panel data sets. The structurally estimated parameters are consistent with recent survey evidence of worker behavior. The model fits moments of the data that are inconsistent with the standard job ladder model and in the process reconciles the level of frictional wage dispersion in the data with replacement ratios used in the macro labor literature. In my third chapter, which is co-authored with Coen Teulings, we develop a simple method to measure the position in the job ladder in models with on-the-job search. The methodology uses two implications from models with on-the-job search: workers gradually select into better paying jobs until they get laid off at which time they start again to climb the job ladder. The measure relies on two sources of variation: (i) time-variation in job-finding rates and (ii) individual variation in the time since the last lay-off. We use the method to quantify the returns to on-the-job search and to establish the shape of the wage offer distribution by means of simple OLS regressions with wages as dependent variables. Moreover, we derive a simple prediction on the distribution of job durations. Applying the method to the NLSY 79, we find strong support for this class of models. We estimate the standard deviation of the wage offer distribution to be 12%. OJS accounts for 30% of the experience profile and 9% of the total wage dispersion.

<p>Recruiting Through Networks - Wage Premiums and Rewards to Recommenders</p><p>This paper examines the firm's use of recommenders in its recruiting process. In the model, recommenders possess personal information about the worker's ability and about the workplace. In view of this private information, the firm may reward recommenders for good recruiting, thus using recommenders as a screening device. In equilibrium the expected skill of a worker is higher if recruitment has occurred through a recommender rather than through the market, but there is no wage premium. Swedish survey data supports the absence of a wage premium for recommended workers. It has not been possible to test the expected skill or the firm's reward policy vis-à-vis the recommender.</p><p>Job Search by Immigrants in Sweden</p><p>This paper analyses the job search strategies of immigrants born outside Europe and compares these with the search strategies of the native population. The analysis uses unique Swedish data gathered during 1998. Two clear patterns can be traced in the empirical analysis: immigrants search more intensively than natives; also, the greater search intensity is a requisite for getting a job. Specifically, the first analysis shows that immigrants who got jobs were likely to have used networks or direct contact with employers to a greater extent than natives. Immigrants who got jobs had submitted more applications and spent more time on job search than natives, while those who did not get jobs had not spent more time on job search than natives. The fourth and last analysis looks at the number of methods used in job search. Immigrants who left unemployment had not used more methods than natives. On the other hand, immigrants who remained unemployed had used significantly more methods than natives, indicating that it is not necessarily productive to use too many methods.</p><p>Wage Effects of Search Methods for Immigrants and Natives in Sweden</p><p>Using unique cross-section survey data collected in 1998, this study examines whether successful job-search method differ between natives and immigrants from outside Europe, and whether there is a wage difference between the two groups associated with the search method used.</p><p>It is found that those individuals from outside Europe who got jobs did relatively better when using formal methods than when using informal ones.</p><p>Next, a wage analysis has been performed, which shows that there is an overall wage discount for those born outside Europe. The discount is larger when using informal methods rather than formal.</p><p>To explore this further the informal method measure is divided in two parts, one part for contacts through friends and family and the second for contacts with the employer. The penalty for immigrants from outside Europe using an informal method as a successive job-search device is partly explained by contact with the employer, suggesting that the penalty for using informal methods has been underestimated in previous studies.An attempt has also been made to control for the effect of unobservable characteristics on wages, but this did not have any significant impact.</p>

Recruiting Through Networks - Wage Premiums and Rewards to Recommenders This paper examines the firm's use of recommenders in its recruiting process. In the model, recommenders possess personal information about the worker's ability and about the workplace. In view of this private information, the firm may reward recommenders for good recruiting, thus using recommenders as a screening device. In equilibrium the expected skill of a worker is higher if recruitment has occurred through a recommender rather than through the market, but there is no wage premium. Swedish survey data supports the absence of a wage premium for recommended workers. It has not been possible to test the expected skill or the firm's reward policy vis-à-vis the recommender. Job Search by Immigrants in Sweden This paper analyses the job search strategies of immigrants born outside Europe and compares these with the search strategies of the native population. The analysis uses unique Swedish data gathered during 1998. Two clear patterns can be traced in the empirical analysis: immigrants search more intensively than natives; also, the greater search intensity is a requisite for getting a job. Specifically, the first analysis shows that immigrants who got jobs were likely to have used networks or direct contact with employers to a greater extent than natives. Immigrants who got jobs had submitted more applications and spent more time on job search than natives, while those who did not get jobs had not spent more time on job search than natives. The fourth and last analysis looks at the number of methods used in job search. Immigrants who left unemployment had not used more methods than natives. On the other hand, immigrants who remained unemployed had used significantly more methods than natives, indicating that it is not necessarily productive to use too many methods. Wage Effects of Search Methods for Immigrants and Natives in Sweden Using unique cross-section survey data collected in 1998, this study examines whether successful job-search method differ between natives and immigrants from outside Europe, and whether there is a wage difference between the two groups associated with the search method used. It is found that those individuals from outside Europe who got jobs did relatively better when using formal methods than when using informal ones. Next, a wage analysis has been performed, which shows that there is an overall wage discount for those born outside Europe. The discount is larger when using informal methods rather than formal. To explore this further the informal method measure is divided in two parts, one part for contacts through friends and family and the second for contacts with the employer. The penalty for immigrants from outside Europe using an informal method as a successive job-search device is partly explained by contact with the employer, suggesting that the penalty for using informal methods has been underestimated in previous studies.An attempt has also been made to control for the effect of unobservable characteristics on wages, but this did not have any significant impact.

Current research on network use in the labor market focuses primarily on network morphology. In this dissertation, I use hierarchical regression to examine the influence of macro-level context on network use in job search.This study relies on a unique data set that combines individual job history data for years 1985 through 2001 collected by the Survey of Social Dynamics and Migration in Russia (SSMDR) in 40 regions in 2001-2002 and corresponding regional macro-economic data published by Goskomstat, the State Statistical Committee of the Russian Federation.The first question of this study focuses on what accounts for the temporal and regional variation in personal network use in the Russian labor market. I find that, for the post-Soviet period, increase in network use in job search can be attributed to the growth of the private sector: Russian employers are becoming "social capitalists" who take advantage of the resources personal connections can offer. I also find that the chances of finding a new job through personal ties are higher in the regions with larger small business sectors and in the regions with lower economic performance.Next I examine how regional economic performance and unemployment affect workers' chances of getting new jobs in the private sector and in smaller size organizations by means of personal networks. The analysis shows that social networks do lead to employment in the private sector and that this relationship is positively affected by regional economic performance, but not by unemployment rate. I also find here that social ties are likely to lead to new jobs in small organizations, but that this relationship does not vary by region.Finally, I investigate how regional economic performance and unemployment rates affect wages for jobs found through personal networks in the private sector and in small organizations. I find that while the private sector rewards network use, small organizations do not. The relationship between network use and wages does not vary by region. That is, regional economic performance does not have an effect on this relationship.

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Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / Daniel A. Andresen / “Dreams Job” is an online Job Search Portal, a web application through which job seekers can register and apply for jobs. Through this portal employers can also post their jobs and review applications. The traditional recruitment systems are time taking and costly. A job seeker must find jobs through advertisements, college fairs, job fairs etc., and the employers must put in much effort to find the right candidate for a vacant position. This application addresses such shortcomings and is a convenient platform for both job seekers to find and apply for jobs and for employers to post jobs and review applications with much ease. Candidates can search for jobs in any field through advanced search capabilities. They can upload their resumes to this application which is stored for future use also. Employers can download these resumes and post/delete job positions. The admin controls this portal and makes the decision about companies and jobs that can access/appear in this portal. Candidates and Employers can use this portal without any geographical barrier, from any part of the world. This application is also developed by using some cutting-edge technologies that are in great demand in the IT industry today. Some of them are NodeJS, AngularJS, Sequelize ORM, etc.

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