IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/31120.html

Skill Depreciation during Unemployment: Evidence from Panel Data

Author

Listed:
  • Jonathan P. Cohen
  • Andrew C. Johnston
  • Attila S. Lindner

Abstract

We use a panel of survey responses linked to administrative data in Germany to measure the depreciation of skills while workers are unemployed. Both the reemployment hazard rate and reemployment earnings steadily fall with unemployment duration, and indicators of depression and loneliness rise substantially. Despite this, we find no decline in a wide range of cognitive and noncognitive skills while workers remain unemployed. We find the same pattern in a panel of American workers. The results imply that skill depreciation in general human capital is unlikely to be a major explanation for duration dependence.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonathan P. Cohen & Andrew C. Johnston & Attila S. Lindner, 2023. "Skill Depreciation during Unemployment: Evidence from Panel Data," NBER Working Papers 31120, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31120
    Note: ED LS PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w31120.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alexander Ahammer & Martin Halla & Pia Heckl & Rudolf Winter-Ebmer, 2025. "Reintegrating Older Long-Term Unemployed Workers: The Impact of Temporary Job Guarantees," CESifo Working Paper Series 12340, CESifo.
    2. Jessen, Jonas & Kinne, Lavinia & Battisti, Michele, 2026. "Child penalties in labour market skills," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 184, pages 1-18.
    3. Kunz, Johannes S. & Trinh, Trong-Anh & Berk, Michael & Earnest, Arul & Engel, Lidia & Hamilton, Matthew & Hayes, Laura & Khanh-Dao Le, Long & Lim, Michelle & Rizal, Fikru & Skouteris, Helen & Shields,, 2025. "Are recessions bad for loneliness?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 384(C).
    4. Mimosa Distefano & Lorenzo Incoronato & Anna Raute, 2026. "Female-targeted hiring subsidies, firm learning, and women’s employment," CEP Discussion Papers dp2209, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    5. Felder, Rahel & Frings, Hanna & Mittag, Nikolas, 2024. "How does potential unemployment insurance benefit duration affect reemployment timing and wages?," Ruhr Economic Papers 1111, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    6. David Dorn & Florian Schoner & Moritz Seebacher & Lisa Simon & Ludger Woessmann, 2024. "Multidimensional Skills on LinkedIn Profiles: Measuring Human Capital and the Gender Skill Gap," Papers 2409.18638, arXiv.org, revised May 2025.
    7. Shisham Adhikari & Athanasios Geromichalos & Ates Gursoy & Ioannis Kospentaris, 2025. "How much work experience do you need to get your first job?: The macroeconomic implications of bias against labor market entrants," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 58, October.
    8. Bertheau, Antoine & Larsen, Birthe & Zhao, Zeyu, 2026. "What makes hiring difficult? Evidence from linked survey-administrative data," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    9. Alexander Ahammer & Martin Halla & Pia Heckl & Rudolf Winter-Ebmer, 2025. "Reintegrated Older Long-Term Unemployed Workers: The Impact of Temporary Job Guarantees," Economics working papers 2025-12, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    10. Miriam Hänni & Irene Kriesi, 2025. "Unemployment Scarring in the Early Career: Do Skills and Labour Demand Matter?," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 13.
    11. Dogan Gülümser, 2026. "Old and New Jobs: Understanding Wage Formation, Sorting, and Firm Behavior," Berlin School of Economics Discussion Papers 0099, Berlin School of Economics.
    12. Zuchuat, Jeremy & Lalive, Rafael & Osikominu, Aderonke & Pesaresi, Lorenzo & Zweimueller, Josef, 2023. "Duration Dependence in Finding a Job: Applications, Interviews, and Job Offers," CEPR Discussion Papers 18600, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    13. Dogan Gülümser, 2026. "Old and New Jobs: Understanding Wage Formation, Sorting, and Firm Behavior," RFBerlin Discussion Paper Series 26155, ROCKWOOL Foundation Berlin (RFBerlin).
    14. Naoki Aizawa & Corina Mommaerts & Stephanie Rennane, 2026. "Firm Accommodation After Workplace Disability: Labor Market Impacts and Implications for Subsidy Design," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 94(2), pages 341-374, March.
    15. Gülümser, Dogan, 2026. "Old and new jobs: Understanding wage formation, sorting and firm behavior," Working Paper Series 2026:14, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J6 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers
    • J60 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - General
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31120. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.