Unemployment Duration and Noncognitive Skills

Abstract

This paper focuses on the role of noncognitive skills on the success of unemployed workers finding a job. We argue that a worker's job search intensity not only relies on the conventional determinants discussed in the job search literature but is decisively driven by her noncognitive skills which rejected in her propensity to motivate and control herself while searching for a job. Moreover, personality traits as far as they can be signaled to a potential employer may also enhance the probability of receiving and accepting a job offer. For our econometric duration analysis we use the well-accepted taxonomy "Big Five" for classifying personality traits. Based on individual unemployment data taken from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) our empirical findings reveal that the personality traits Conscientiousness, and Neuroticism have a strong impact on the probability of finding a job, while we do not find any significant effects of the personality traits Extraversion and Agreeableness on the duration of unemployment. The personality trait Openness happens to be once significant for one non-german unemployed worker.