Face-to-Face Meetings, Worker Mobility, and Referrals

We study how different communication technologies shape the labor-market consequences of social networks. We develop a simple framework in which communication technologies differ in the effectiveness with which pre-existing social ties facilitate workplace mobility. Using cellphone geolocation and sociodemographic data on 3.3 million workers in Beijing, we construct a measure of the relative importance of face-to-face interaction and exploit workplace transitions within friendship networks. Conditional on friendship and pre-existing relationship strength, a higher face-to-face communication share is associated with a significantly greater likelihood of workplace following. This relationship emerges only after the friend has already joined the destination workplace, implying that differences in communication patterns become economically relevant only when the social tie is in a position to influence workplace mobility. Our findings show that worker mobility depends not only on who workers know, but also on how they communicate, implying that communication technologies are imperfect substitutes in shaping the labor-market value of social networks.