Worker occupational skills and unemployment duration: a competing-risks econometric approach

This paper explains differences in unemployment duration among unemployed workers by differences in their skills, using the unemployed workers' previous occupation and education level to capture their skills. I use the cumulative incidence approach from the statistics literature, which is a better alternative to the standard survival econometric methods in cases of competing risks. In addition to showing that the standard survival econometric methods are biased, I find that the higher the unemployed worker is on the skill ladder based on their previous occupation, the faster their transition rate to a full-time job. An extra year of education has a positive effect on reducing unemployment duration. Those with a bachelor's degree tend to have the shortest employment duration among all unemployed individuals. However, the impact of education on transitioning from unemployment to a full-time job is less pronounced the higher the unemployed worker's previous occupation is on the skill ladder.