FIRST-TIME JOBSEEKERS VERSUS UNEMPLOYED WITH PREVIOUS WORK EXPERIENCE

ABSTRACT

Italy has one of the highest incidences of long-term unemployment among OECD countries. The share of first-time jobseekers among the long-term unemployed is outstanding compared to that of the unemployed who have lost a job. Using data from the Italian Household Panel survey and event history analysis, this paper investigates the impact of individual, familial and institutional factors on the duration of unemployment spells of Italian first-time jobseekers and those unemployed who have lost their job, and assesses the issue of duration dependence. Findings emphasise the importance from a policy perspective of analysing these two unemployment experiences separately. The two unemployed groups undergo very different processes of exiting unemployment due to some specific institutional and structural features of the Italian socio-economic context. Results indicate that in Italy the chances of finding a first job decrease with time, and education proves to be effective only after long job searches. On the contrary, among Italian adult unemployed the probability of finding a new job largely depends on individual and familial characteristics rather than on mechanisms associated to the length of time spent unemployed.

Keywords:

• youth and adult unemployment
• long-term unemployment
• duration dependence
• institutional embeddedness
• labour market regulation
• educational signalling

Acknowledgements

The study has been realised using the data collected for the ‘Indagine Longitudinale sulle Famiglie Italiane (ILFI)’ project. I would like to thank Antonio Schizzerotto for permission to use the data, and Anthony Cossburn, Christina Mokhtar and Mark Taylor for their comments on previous drafts of this paper. I am very grateful to the reviewers for their valuable comments and constructive suggestions.

Notes

¹The remaining 20.5 percent refers to those people identified as ‘other unemployed people’: homemakers, students (in full-time education) and pensioners who do not regard themselves as unemployed; yet they are available to start work and are actively seeking employment.

²Among the few exceptions are the studies by Bernardi et al. (2000), Lalla and Pattarin (2001), Schizerotto (2002).

³The concept of ‘defamilization’ as re-elaborated by Esping-Andersen (1999) denotes provision of services outside the family by either state or market, which normally increases women's economic independence.

⁴The piecewise exponential model with period-specific effects assumes constant baseline hazards within the chosen time intervals. Yet, hazards are allowed to increase or decrease among intervals. Thus, the model offers a flexible specification of time. Based on the results from the survival tables, unemployment spells have been split into five intervals: 0–3, 3–6, 6–12, 12–36 and 36+ (months) for first-time job seekers, and 0–6, 6–12, 12–24, 24–36 and 36+ (months) for unemployed who have lost a previous job.⁵ The hazard for individuals in the reference (baseline) category of each variable is called baseline hazard (see Tables 1–3 for the reference categories).

⁵The coefficient was estimated to be –0.37. For an easier interpretation of the coefficients, the formula for the hazard ratio is commonly used: ▵r =(exp(coeff) − 1). The hazard ratio is an estimate of the ratio of the hazard rate in the group of interest versus the reference group.

⁶The only group affected by this event is the group of male first-time jobseekers living in the North. They face a hazard 40 percent higher compared to those living in their families of origin. This may be due to the fact that young men living in the North are more likely to live alone when compared to other groups.