Scarring Due to Unemployment by Gender: Evidence from a Cross-Country Factorial Survey

The allocation of individuals to occupations is a main mechanism of social
reproduction and social stratification. Many studies elucidated the individual
antecedents and consequences of this process. An interest has often been in how
social origin moderates the transition from education to employment. However,
empirical evidence on the role of recruiters in this fundamental social process
is scarce. Against this backdrop, we examine how these gatekeepers evaluate
hiring chances of young job applicants. In our contribution, we specifically
focus on scarring due to unemployment in the health sector. Drawing on human
capital theory and signalling theory, we expect variation in the hiring chances
of male vs. female job seekers with respect to the length of previous and current
unemployment spells.
Using data from a recent large-scale factorial survey of recruiters in four European
countries (N ≈ 2,000) and employing multilevel linear regression models,
we find, overall, evidence for heterogeneous scarring effects. Young male
job applicants who were unemployed received less favourable assessments compared
to their female counterparts. Having been unemployed or being currently
unemployed was not associated with hiring chances in young females. Our preliminary
findings constitute new evidence on gender differences in scarring due
to unemployment. They further contribute to the literature on transitions to
employment.