Sorting in the Labor Market: Do Gregarious Workers Flock to Interactive Jobs? / Alan B. Krueger, David Schkade.

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Krueger, Alan B

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Material type: Text

TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w13032.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2007.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Subject(s):

J0 - General

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Abstract: This paper tests a central implication of the theory of equalizing differences, that workers sort into jobs with different attributes based on their preferences for those attributes. We present evidence from four new time-use data sets for the United States and France on whether workers who are more gregarious, as revealed by their behavior when they are not working, tend to be employed in jobs that involve more social interactions. In each data set we find a significant and sizable relationship between the tendency to interact with others off the job and while working. People's descriptions of their jobs and their personalities also accord reasonably well with their time use on and off the job. Furthermore, workers in occupations that require social interactions according to the O'Net Dictionary of Occupational Titles tend to spend more of their non-working time with friends. Lastly, we find that workers report substantially higher levels of job satisfaction and net affect while at work if their jobs entail frequent interactions with coworkers and other desirable working conditions.

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Item type	Home library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Working Paper	Biblioteca Digital	Colección NBER	nber w13032 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Not For Loan

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Previous	nber w1303 Bequests as a Means of Payment /	nber w13030 Rent Rigidity, Asymmetric Information, and Volatility Bounds in Labor Markets /	nber w13031 Aggregation Reversals and the Social Formation of Beliefs /	nber w13032 Sorting in the Labor Market: Do Gregarious Workers Flock to Interactive Jobs? /	nber w13033 Intellectual Property Rights, Imitation, and Foreign Direct Investment: Theory and Evidence /	nber w13034 Bribery in Health Care in Peru and Uganda /	nber w13035 Unbalanced Trade /	Next

April 2007.

This paper tests a central implication of the theory of equalizing differences, that workers sort into jobs with different attributes based on their preferences for those attributes. We present evidence from four new time-use data sets for the United States and France on whether workers who are more gregarious, as revealed by their behavior when they are not working, tend to be employed in jobs that involve more social interactions. In each data set we find a significant and sizable relationship between the tendency to interact with others off the job and while working. People's descriptions of their jobs and their personalities also accord reasonably well with their time use on and off the job. Furthermore, workers in occupations that require social interactions according to the O'Net Dictionary of Occupational Titles tend to spend more of their non-working time with friends. Lastly, we find that workers report substantially higher levels of job satisfaction and net affect while at work if their jobs entail frequent interactions with coworkers and other desirable working conditions.