Job Displacement and the Duration of Joblessness: The Role of Spatial Mismatch

This paper presents a new approach to the measurement of the effects of spatial mismatch that takes advantage of matched employer-employee administrative data integrated with a person-specific job accessibility measure, as well as demographic and neighborhood characteristics. We focus on a group who are job searchers for plausibly exogenous reasons: lower-income workers with strong labor force attachment separated during a mass layoff. Our results support the spatial mismatch hypothesis. We find that better job accessibility significantly decreases the duration of joblessness among lower-income displaced workers and especially for Blacks, females, and older workers. JEL Codes: J64, R23, R41.