Journal of Labor Economics Vol. 43 No. 3 2025

The Search for Good Jobs: Evidence from a Six-Year Field Experiment in Uganda

Oriana Bandiera¹; Vittorio Bassi^2,3; Robin Burgess¹; Imran Rasul⁴; Munshi Sulaiman⁵; Anna Vitali⁶

¹ London School of Economics and Political Science · ² University of Southern California · ³ California Southern University · ⁴ University College London · ⁵ BRAC University · ⁶ New York University

Abstract

There are 420 million young people in Africa today, and only one in three has a regular salaried job. We study how two common labor market interventions—vocational training and matching—affect the job search behavior of young workers. We do so by means of a field experiment tracking young job seekers for 6 years in Uganda’s main cities. Vocational training amplifies the job seekers’ initial optimism, leading them to search more intensively and toward high-quality firms. Adding matching has the opposite effect, plausibly because of low callback rates. These differences affect labor market outcomes in the long run.

DOI

10.1086/728429

Volume

43

Issue

3

Pages

885-935

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite

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