Why workers queue for local government jobs: the US evidence

Abstract

Following the technique of bivariate probit with partial observability, I find the evidence that one reason US workers queue for local government jobs is to obtain union status. The average desire probability for local government union jobs is found to be twice as large as the desire probability for local-non-union employment. Estimated from the same sample, the length of the local-union queue, which is almost twice the size of the queue for local-non-union jobs, suggests the importance of the desire for union status in the worker's decision to enter the local government job queue