Can vacancy referrals to remote but booming labor markets affect job-search behavior and mobility? Evidence from a randomized controlled trail

Last registered on December 20, 2024

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Can vacancy referrals to remote but booming labor markets affect job-search behavior and mobility? Evidence from a randomized controlled trail
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0014823
Initial registration date
December 19, 2024

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
December 20, 2024, 2:24 PM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Swedish Public Employment Service

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
Swedish Public Employment Service
PI Affiliation
Swedish Public Employment Service
PI Affiliation
Swedish Public Employment Service

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2024-11-11
End date
2025-04-30
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
The northern region of Sweden faces a strong demand for employees across multiple industries and the Swedish government is actively trying to create incentives for unemployed individuals to relocate to these regions. The Swedish public employment service has been assigned to evaluate if vacancy referrals to job openings in the northern regions have a positive effect on the probability that unemployed individuals apply to these jobs and also to a higher degree relocate to these regions. A randomized controlled trial has been implemented where job-seekers in the treatment group are given vacancy referrals to job-openings in the northern regions. Job-seekers in the treatment group are randomly divided between vacancy referrals mandatory or only suggestive to apply for. The control-group receives treatment as usual. For this group, it is possible to get suggested vacancy referrals, but the referrals will be to job-openings in the region where the job-seeker resides and not to the northern regions. The target group for the intervention is job-seekers who have been unemployed between 4,5 and 12 months and have the qualifications necessary to apply for job-openings in the northern regions. The job-seekers are selected among those scheduled to have a follow-up meeting with a case worker at the public employment service within the coming week. To increase the efficiency of vacancy referrals, job-openings have been chosen in occupations where the labor market is significantly tighter in the northern regions compared to in the country as a whole. The primary outcomes of the study will be job-search behavior, employment outcomes and geographical and occupational mobility.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Böhlmark, Anders et al. 2024. "Can vacancy referrals to remote but booming labor markets affect job-search behavior and mobility? Evidence from a randomized controlled trail." AEA RCT Registry. December 20. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.14823-1.0
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention Start Date
2024-11-11
Intervention End Date
2025-04-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Outcomes will be constructed using administrative data from the Swedish Public Employment Service and Statistics Sweden. The primary outcomes will be:
- Labor market outcomes, for example exits from unemployment to employment or education
- Geographical mobility outcomes, for example probability of internal migration in Sweden
- Job search behavior, for example job search intensity and probability of broadened job search in terms of occupational or geographical search area

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
A randomized controlled trial has been implemented where job-seekers in the treatment group are given vacancy referrals to job-openings in the northern regions. The trial is implemented at the Swedish public employment service. Job-seekers in the target group scheduled for a meeting with a case worker are randomized between three different meeting-types: (1) treatment as usual, (2) treatment as usual + vacancy referral to job-opening in the northern region, mandatory to apply for and (3) treatment as usual + vacancy referral to job-opening in the northern region, not mandatory to apply for. For job-seekers in the control group, it is possible to get vacancy referrals, but the referrals will be to job-openings in the region where the job-seeker resides and not to the northern regions.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization done by a computer (administered by the analysis department at the Swedish PES)
Randomization Unit
Job-seeker
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
Depending on the inflow of job-seekers in the target group, we plan for 25000-30000 job-seekers participating in the study.
Sample size: planned number of observations
25000-30000 job-seekers
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
The plan is to randomize around 50 percent of job-seekers to meetings including vacancy referrals. Number of individuals in the treatment group will therefore be around 12500-15000. Of those, 50 percent will be randomized to meetings where they get vacancy referrals mandatory to apply to, and 50 percent will be randomized to meetings where they get suggested vacancy referrals not mandatory to apply for. The control group will be around 12500-15000 and will be given treatment as usual.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number