Essays on Unemployment

Abstract

This dissertation explores the factors that shape individual labor force transitions after job loss. Using mixed methods, I explore how people navigate the aftermath of job loss in the U.S. and the variables that influence this process. In the first essay, I use in-depth interviews with a diverse group of women in Greater Boston to understand how individual trajectories after job loss take shape. These women had been separated from hourly service employment because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I trace their responses after that separation in terms of intensity of search effort and jobs pursued. I offer a richer understanding of what women do and how they feel in the aftermath of job loss. I also propose a more multifaceted view of the factors influencing unemployed women’s decision-making with respect to their labor market positions and relationships with work. This type of qualitative analysis emphasizes that many women strive for labor market outcomes that align with politicians’ rhetoric about the importance of steady work but often encounter obstacles that set them back. I conclude the chapter with a discussion of policy changes aimed at helping women employed in low-paid work achieve greater stability. In the second essay, I explore institutional influences on individual labor force transitions after job loss in greater depth. Specifically, I explore the role of unemployment insurance (UI), a social insurance program that provides people who have lost their jobs with temporary income to meet basic needs while they job search. Combining linked Current Population Survey data with state administrative sources, I investigate the degree to which preexisting features of state UI programs affected job finding of the non-employed and job quality of the reemployed during the COVID-19 pandemic. During a period of unprecedented federal expansion, I try to understand the degree to which pre-pandemic features of state UI programs remained important. The role of interstate variation, particularly the influence of stricter states, is increasingly relevant, as more states grow emboldened to challenge established UI system norms or break with the federal partner. This essay contributes to the small but growing literature that traces disparate labor force outcomes to state UI policy differences. Further, it contributes a new dimension of insight to the vast UI literature by exploring the role of states. Read together, this dissertation contributes insight to issues and debates that are central to work and employment, a field committed to surfacing the labor market’s most pressing challenges and proposing solutions to make work more equitable and humane. Findings show that unemployment can be an upending force in people’s lives, and our public policy has a long way to go before it can adequately address the wide-ranging fallout.