Job Searching and the Weather: Evidence from Time-Use Data
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Job Searching and the Weather: Evidence from Time-Use Data Jorge González Chapela 1 Accepted: 8 November 2020/ # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This paper combines individual-level time-use data for 2003–2017 with daily weather observations for U.S. counties to estimate the effects of precipitation and temperature on the intensity of job searching by the unemployed. Linear and nonlinear effects are investigated, along with heterogeneous responses across different populations. A 1 °C increase in maximum (minimum) temperature produces a same-day decrease (increase) in job-search time of close to 0.9 (1.7) minutes. For women, job-search time is 17 min shorter on days of heavy rain, whereas men search some 21 (26) minutes more on days of mild (moderate) rain. These changes do not appear to be offset on subsequent days. Keywords Job searching . Weather . Time use . Unemployment JEL Classification C31 . J64
Introduction The availability of large-scale time-use surveys around the world has prompted analyses of how much time job seekers allocate to job searching. Equipped with a reliable measure of the time spent searching for a job, researchers have provided new evidence on the link between this time and unemployment benefits (Krueger and Mueller 2010), and have documented its variability across countries (Krueger and Mueller 2012) and over spells of unemployment (Krueger and Mueller 2011), the life-cycle (Aguiar et al. 2013), and the business cycle (DeLoach and Kurt 2013; Gomme and Lkhagvasuren 2015; Mukoyama et al. 2018). However, job-search time has not been examined in search of evidence on the role of the weather in the intensity of job searching by the unemployed, who are generally free to set their search intensity on a day-to-day basis.
* Jorge González Chapela [email protected]
1
Centro Universitario de la Defensa de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain
Journal of Labor Research
Through its impact on the marginal utility of leisure (Connolly 2008), good weather may encourage the unemployed to substitute leisure for job-search activities.1 However, good weather may also encourage job searching for at least three reasons: First, although it’s rarely conducted outdoors, about 40% of job-search time in the U.S. is spent outside the home, so job seekers are exposed to weather during the related travel. Second, buildings are not perfectly insulated, so even when job-search activities are conducted indoors, individuals may be put off by uncomfortable temperatures (Heal and Park 2016), which may lead them to forsake job searching for more relaxed activities. And third, good weather may lift people’s mood (e.g., see Keller et al. 2005), which could lead the unemployed to revise upward their beliefs as to how productive searching for a job may be (Barron and Mellow 1979).2 A priori, therefore, the potential influence of the weather on time spent searching for a job is ambiguous, as it involves potentially opposing linkages. However, it is important to measure it, as job-search inte
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