Exits from unemployment:: Recall or new job

This paper studies transitions out of unemployment in Spain distinguishing between recall to the same employer and reemployment in a new job. We use a large sample of newly unemployed workers obtained from Social Security records for Spain. These data contain information about each individual's employer identity before and after the unemployment spell. A discrete-time duration model with competing risks of exits serves us to investigate the factors that influence the probabilities of leaving unemployment to return to the same employer or to find a new job with a different employer. We find that taking into account the route to exit unemployment helps us to understand the influence of individual and job characteristics on the hazard rate. Moreover, the recall hazard rate exhibits no duration dependence, whereas the new-job hazard rate presents positive duration dependence. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.