Title: The role of personal networks in the labour insertion of weak jobseekers

Authors: Valentina Lamonica; Elena Ragazzi; Elena Santanera; Lisa Sella

Addresses: CNR-IRCrES, National Research Council – Research Institute on Sustainable Economic Growth, V. Real Collegio 30, 10124 Moncalieri (TO), Italy ' CNR-IRCrES, National Research Council – Research Institute on Sustainable Economic Growth, V. Real Collegio 30, 10124 Moncalieri (TO), Italy ' CNR-IRCrES, National Research Council – Research Institute on Sustainable Economic Growth, V. Real Collegio 30, 10124 Moncalieri (TO), Italy ' CNR-IRCrES, National Research Council – Research Institute on Sustainable Economic Growth, V. Real Collegio 30, 10124 Moncalieri (TO), Italy

Abstract: This paper investigates the labour market outcomes of a representative sample of unemployed individuals attending regional vocational training programs in Piedmont, North-West Italy. In particular, it proposes a multivariate analysis to describe and assess the effects of individual social networks (family, friends and acquaintance) on trainees' employment outcome. Analysing the influence of different network configurations on the probability of getting employed in the post-training medium period, it can be pointed out that strict and intense family ties are negatively correlated to individual employability. Moreover, it emerges that job referral is one of the most popular job search channels among Italian trainees, proving to be the most successful one.

Keywords: social networks; vocational training; counterfactual analysis; labour integration; job referral; personal networks; weak jobseekers; labour market outcomes; unemployed; Italy; multivariate analysis; trainees; employment outcome; family ties; individual employability; job search channels.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCEE.2016.077267

International Journal of Computational Economics and Econometrics, 2016 Vol.6 No.3, pp.315 - 335

Received: 05 Dec 2014
Accepted: 05 Nov 2015
Published online: 25 Jun 2016 *

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