Motivating Job Seekers: A Field Experiment

Reduced motivation over the unemployment spell may contribute to declining job-finding rates. We report findings from a low-cost digital intervention that uses motivational emails to enhance job seekers' search effort. Using a randomized controlled trial that included 200,720 newly unemployed job seekers in Sweden, we evaluate both supportive messages aimed at encouraging inner motivation, and controlling messages focused on internal and external pressure. The messages increased compliance with mandatory activity reporting, indicating a clear first-stage behavioral response. However, this behavioral change did not translate in more effective job search as both types of emails caused a moderate but significant reduction in search effort and job finding. The supportive messages reduced the number of job applications and showed weakly negative job-finding effects, particularly among men. The controlling messages slightly backfired for job seekers who report strong autonomous motivation at the onset of unemployment. These findings underscore the challenges of motivating job seekers to actively search for jobs and suggest that low-cost digital interventions, in isolation, are inadequate and may even be counterproductive.