The effects of unemployment insurance on unemployment duration and job quality

This project revisits the question of how unemployment benefits affect job quality.

The level of unemployment benefits influences how jobseekers search for work. Economic theory suggests that it also affects the quality of their next job: higher benefits allow unemployed individuals to be more selective, rather than having to accept the first available job to support themselves. However, the extent to which benefits affect job quality in practice remains debated.

The researchers will study the quality of subsequent jobs by comparing private-sector white-collar employees covered by collective agreements who qualify for higher unemployment benefits from the year they turn 40 and have more than five years of employment with workers who do not meet these criteria.

The project uses data from the Swedish Public Employment Service and Statistics Sweden. Specifically, it links redundancy notification data to supplementary unemployment insurance payments recorded in the Income and Taxation Register.

Project leader

Jonas Cederlöf

Other project participants

Peter Fredriksson
Martin Häggkvist