Applications for job vacancies along the unemployment spell

This paper describes how job-seekers apply to job vacancies posted at the French Public Employment Service. More precisely, we look at how characteristics of job postings to which the unemployed apply evolve over their unemployment spell. We find that, over a spell, job seekers become more likely to apply to jobs with less pro- tected contracts, while wages barely adjust. These conclusions must be interpreted with caution as recorded job application data at the PES may suffer from various measurement errors, such as partial coverage. Collecting all job application data from the PES website is a promising avenue to reduce such biases and to strengthen our results. ∗We would like to thank, for very helpful comments, Gary Chamberlain, Raj Chetty, Simon Jaeger, Xavier Jaravel, Lawrence Katz, Andreas Mueller, Arne Uhlendorff and seminar participants at Harvard Labor Lunch, Harvard Kennedy School, CREST and Toulouse School of Economics.We are grateful to Pôle Emploi, and in particular Anita Bonnet, for letting us access their data. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Pôle Emploi. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from la Chaire de Sécurisation des Parcours Professionnels (project SPP-2013-1-PR6). †Bocconi University ‡University of Warwick §Insead