General Seminar - Simon Franklin

Can job-search assistance change a career? Twelve-year experimental evidence from Ethiopia (with Girum Abebe, Stefano Caria, Simon Quinn, Paolo Falco)

A growing literature suggests that labour markets in developing countries may not be working to deliver higher wages, both because frictions make it difficult for people to find good jobs and because jobs themselves provide relatively little wage growth. Yet we know very little about what careers actually look like over long periods in these settings, what makes for a good career, or whether short-run interventions aimed at tackling labour-market frictions can improve career progress. We study a twelve-year panel of young jobseekers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, combining multiple years of surveys and monthly work histories for 2015–26. We present new stylised facts on the factors shaping the careers of men and women, and estimate the twelve-year effects of a transport subsidy and a job-application workshop offered in the original randomised experiment. The experiment produced marked effects on employment and earnings over its first four years, especially for women. We ask whether these interventions put people on better career paths, and whether those paths led to better employment and higher earnings twelve years later.