Social networks of long-term unemployed and the commencement of employment

Abstract

"This paper examines whether the social networks of unemployed people have a positive impact on their re-employment chances. Hypotheses are derived from the literature, concerning different aspects of the network. We hypothesize that the more (strong and weak) social ties, the more employed friends the unemployed have and the more resources there are in their network, the higher their chances for re-employment. We use data from the Panel Study 'Labour Market and Social Security' (Panel 'Arbeitsmarkt und soziale Sicherung'), where comprehensive information on the unemployed persons - networks is available. We use fixed-effects regression to control for observed time-variant and unobserved time-invariant confounders. We find weak ties in the form of active memberships in voluntary organisations as well as network resources that are not directly related to job search to be significantly related to re-employment. The implications of this finding are discussed." (Author's abstract, © De Gruyter) ((en))

Cite article

Krug, G., Wolf, C. & Trappmann, M. (2019): Soziale Netzwerke Langzeitarbeitsloser und die Aufnahme einer Erwerbstätigkeit. In: Zeitschrift für Soziologie, Vol. 48, No. 5-6, p. 349-365., accepted on October 15, 2019. DOI:10.1515/zfsoz-2019-0025