Unemployment benefit schemes, quality of career trajectories and reallocation of workers

"Unemployment benefit schemes are often evaluated on their impact on both the length of unemployment periods as well as on the quality of the job which is found (at the end of the unemployment period). An analysis in terms of efficiency matching between employers and employees suggests that an efficient unemployment benefit scheme is not necessarily one which shortens the unemployment period. Taking into account the quality of the first ""newly found job"" is a way to approach, through individual cases, a broader contribution of an unemployment scheme to the general welfare. In this perspective it is not relevant to restrain the analysis to the quality of the first newly found job nor to the approximations which constitute the hiring conditions (wage, status, etc.). The focal point is less the quality of the first newly found job, than the trajectory out of unemployment. Hiring conditions merely explain part of the schemes' efficiency. We here suggest documenting and analyzing empirically the contribution of unemployment benefits to the efficiency of allocating the workforce to “better suited positions”. "