Publication: Labor Market Analysis Using Big Data: The Case of a Pakistani Online Job Portal
Loading...
Files in English
872 downloads
Date
2019-11
ISSN
Published
2019-11
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Facing a youth bulge—a large influx of a young labor force—the Pakistani economy needs to create more jobs by taking advantage of this relatively well-educated young labor force. Yet, the educated young labor force suffers a higher unemployment rate, and there is a concern that the current education and training system in the country does not respond to skill demands in the private sector. This paper provides new descriptives about labor markets, particularly skill demand and supply, by using online job portal data. The paper finds that although there is an excess supply of highly educated workers, certain industries, such as information and communications technology, lack workers who have specialized skills and experience. The analysis also finds that the exact match of qualifications and skills is important for employers. Job applicants who are underqualified or overqualified for job posts are less likely to be shortlisted than those whose qualifications exactly match job requirements.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Matsuda, Norihiko; Ahmed, Tutan; Nomura, Shinsaku. 2019. Labor Market Analysis Using Big Data: The Case of a Pakistani Online Job Portal. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9063. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32672 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication The Asymmetric Bank Distress Amplifier of Recessions(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-11)One defining feature of financial crises, evident in U.S. and international data, is asymmetric bank distress—concentrated losses on a subset of banks. This paper proposes a model in which shocks to borrowers’ productivity dispersion lead to asymmetric bank losses. The framework exhibits a “bank distress amplifier,” exacerbating economic downturns by causing costly bank failures and raising uncertainty about the solvency of banks, thereby pushing banks to deleverage. Quantitative analysis shows that the bank distress amplifier doubles investment decline and increases the spread by 2.5 times during the Great Recession compared to a standard financial accelerator model. The mechanism helps explain how a seemingly small shock can sometimes trigger a large crisis.Publication From Tailwinds to Headwinds(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-10)The first quarter of the twenty-first century has been transformative for emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs). These economies now account for about 45 percent of global GDP, up from about 25 percent in 2000, a trend driven by robust collective growth in the three largest EMDEs—China, India, and Brazil (the EM3). Collectively, EMDEs have contributed about 60 percent of annual global growth since 2000, on average, double the share during the 1990s. Their ascendance was powered by swift global trade and financial integration, especially during the first decade of the century. Interdependence among these economies has also increased markedly. Today, nearly half of goods exports from EMDEs go to other EMDEs, compared to one-quarter in 2000. As cross-border linkages have strengthened, business cycles among EMDEs and between EMDEs and advanced economies have become more synchronized, and a distinct EMDE business cycle has emerged. Cross-border business cycle spillovers from the EM3 to other EMDEs are sizable, at about half of the magnitude of spillovers from the largest advanced economies (the United States, the euro area, and Japan). Yet EMDEs confront a host of headwinds at the turn of the second quarter of the century. Progress implementing structural reforms in many of these economies has stalled. Globally, protectionist measures and geopolitical fragmentation have risen sharply. High debt burdens, demographic shifts, and the rising costs of climate change weigh on economic prospects. A successful policy approach to accelerate growth and development should focus on boosting investment and productivity, navigating a difficult external environment, and enhancing macroeconomic stability.Publication Intergenerational Income Mobility around the World(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-09)This paper introduces a new global database with estimates of intergenerational income mobility for 87 countries, covering 84 percent of the world’s population. This marks a notable expansion of the cross-country evidence base on income mobility, particularly among low- and middle-income countries. The estimates indicate that the negative association between income mobility and inequality (known as the Great Gatsby Curve) continues to hold across this wider range of countries. The database also reveals a positive association between income mobility and national income per capita, suggesting that countries achieve higher levels of intergenerational mobility as they grow richer.Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication Global Poverty Revisited Using 2021 PPPs and New Data on Consumption(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-05)Recent improvements in survey methodologies have increased measured consumption in many low- and lower-middle-income countries that now collect a more comprehensive measure of household consumption. Faced with such methodological changes, countries have frequently revised upward their national poverty lines to make them appropriate for the new measures of consumption. This in turn affects the World Bank’s global poverty lines when they are periodically revised. The international poverty line, which is based on the typical poverty line in low-income countries, increases by around 40 percent to $3.00 when the more recent national poverty lines as well as the 2021 purchasing power parities are incorporated. The net impact of the changes in international prices, the poverty line, and new survey data (including new data for India) is an increase in global extreme poverty by some 125 million people in 2022, and a significant shift of poverty away from South Asia and toward Sub-Saharan Africa. The changes at higher poverty lines, which are more relevant to middle-income countries, are mixed.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Impacts of COVID-19 on Labor Markets and Household Well-Being in Pakistan(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-02)This brief uses the administrative database of Pakistan’s largest online job platform and an online COVID-19 survey to examine the gender impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on labor markets and other well-being indicators. The analysis shows that the pandemic led to an unprecedented level of economic insecurity, resulting in widespread job loss, business closures, slowdown in business activity, and reduced working hours. The sectors where women are more likely to be employed, such as education and health, were more severely affected, yet the post-pandemic recovery was faster for males. The pandemic has also led to a disproportionate increase in women’s unpaid care work, as well as increasing their reported rates of stress, anxiety and exposure to violence. These findings suggest that impacts resulting from COVID-19 might lead to further declines in women’s participation in the economy in Pakistan, where women’s labor force participation is already among the world’s lowest.Publication Toward Labor Market Policy 2.0(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-02)Economists and other social scientists are increasingly using big data analytics to address longstanding economic questions and complement existing information sources. Big data produced by online platforms can yield a wealth of diverse, highly granular, multidimensional information with a variety of potential applications. This paper examines how online job-portal data can be used as a basis for policy-relevant research in the fields of labor economics and workforce skills development, through an empirical analysis of information generated by Babajob, an online Indian job portal. The analysis highlights five key areas where online job-portal data can contribute to the development of labor market policies and analytical knowledge: (i) labor market monitoring and analysis; (ii) assessing demand for workforce skills; (iii) observing job-search behavior and improving skills matching; (iv) predictive analysis of skills demand; and (v) experimental studies. The unique nature of the data produced by online job-search portals allows for the application of diverse analytical methodologies, including descriptive data analysis, time-series analysis, text analysis, predictive analysis, and transactional data analysis. This paper is intended to contribute to the academic literature and the development of public policies. It contributes to the literature on labor economics through application of big data analytics to real-world data. The analysis also provides a unique case study on labor market data analytics in a developing-country context in South Asia. Finally, the report examines the potential for using big data to improve the design and implementation of labor market policies and promote demand-driven skills development.Publication Asymmetric Information on Noncognitive Skills in the Indian Labor Market(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03)This paper examines the impact of noncognitive (socio-emotional) skills on job market outcomes, using a randomized control trial implemented in an online job portal in India. Job seekers who registered in the portal were asked to take a Big-Five type personality test and, for a random subsample of the test takers, the results were displayed to potential employers. The outcomes are measured by whether a potential employer shortlisted a job seeker by opening (unlocking) his/her application and background information. The results show that the treatment group for whom test results were shown generally enjoyed a higher probability of unlock. That is, employers are more interested in those for whom they can see personality test results. Such a relationship was not seen in the pre-test period, which confirms that the results are unlikely to be spurious. The study also finds a significant impact among organized, calm, imaginative, and/or quiet applicants (no effect is detected among easy-going, sensitive, realistic, and/or outgoing applicants), which seems to display employers' preference.Publication Fast, Easy and Cheap Job Matching(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-06)This paper uncovers the reason why social networks are used in a job market. The data are novel: a nationally representative matched employer-employee data set in Bangladesh with detailed information, including direct measures of the use of social networks. The empirical analysis shows that compared with those who used open channels to find jobs, the employees who used social networks found jobs more easily, have lower observable abilities, and achieved lower employment outcomes conditional on observable and unobservable abilities. These results are robust whether firm-occupation fixed effects are controlled for or not. By comparing these findings with theoretical predictions, the paper concludes that social networks play the role as fast and easy but narrow-spectrum matching. That is, social networks allow job seekers to find jobs quickly and easily and thereby reduce search costs, but the types of jobs available from social networks are narrower than those from open channels. As a consequence, those who choose to use social networks are more likely to end up having mismatched jobs, that is jobs in which they cannot take advantage of their specialties. In the context of developing countries, a considerable number of poor job seekers may use social networks out of necessity even if the returns to finding good-match jobs through open channels are sufficiently high.Publication The Temptation of Social Networks under Job Search Frictions(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2025-02-07)This paper presents descriptive evidence that although social networks help find jobs, the jobs found through social networks tend to be mismatched. The paper uses nationally representative matched employer-employee data in Bangladesh that includes direct measures of match quality. Less educated and seemingly poorer workers are more likely to have found their jobs through social networks. Compared to workers at the same occupation level in the same firm who were matched through formal channels, those matched through social networks found their jobs quicker but had lower match quality and earned less. The mechanism, suggested by a theoretical model, is as follows: even when social networks are connected to mismatched jobs, workers can be tempted to use social networks to find mismatched jobs for fear of finding nothing. This temptation is more potent for less skilled and poorer workers because costly formal channels are less rewarding and affordable for them.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
No results found.