Seek and ye shall find: how search requirements affect job finding rates of older workers

Older workers often have difficulties to find a new job after becoming unemployment. While this problem is often attributed to low job availability, new evidence from the Netherlands suggests that older workers should by no means be discouraged as job search effort of older workers has a positive impact on job finding rates. In a new IZA discussion paper, Patrick Hullegie and Jan van Ours study how a specific rule in the Dutch of unemployment insurance affected the job finding rates of elderly unemployed workers. In the Netherlands unemployment insurance recipients were for a long time exempt from the requirement to actively search for a job when they reached the age of 57.5. The authors find evidence that the job finding rate of unemployed workers who were getting close to the age of 57.5 is reduced in anticipation of the removal of the search requirement. In addition the study shows a large negative effect on job finding rates of the actual removal of the search requirement. Apparently, even for persons with seemingly poor job prospects search requirements have a positive effect on finding rates. Read the complete discussion paper.