Abstract

We present real-time survey evidence on workers’ job search behavior and their beliefs on the returns to search effort. We find little evidence that the novel aspects of the pandemic recession have fundamentally changed workers’ motivations for job search: that an existing job is expected to end or has unsatisfactory pay are the primary motives for on-the-job search. On the contrary, workers’ ability to do their tasks from home is not a strong predictor of job search nor a significant motive for switching occupations. We also provide the first evidence on workers’ perceptions of the returns to search effort. While workers are over-optimistic about the probability of receiving a job offer conditional on any search, they perceive that the marginal return to additional hours spent searching on the intensive margin is significantly positive but low. Our findings support the common practise of simply asking respondents about the probability of receiving job offers unconditional on search effort in survey modules, and can also motivate the functional form used in theoretical search-and-matching models.