"The role of caseworkers in the labor market integration of young unemployed : Evidence from France"
Joint with Pierre Villedieu (Sciences Po)

Abstract : Young people experience difficult school-to-work transitions and some with low employment prospects turn to public services. In face of these difficulties, specific agencies (called “missions locales”) are specially dedicated to help young people in France. We propose to use the quasi-random assignment of caseworkers to youths in selected agencies to study how they can affect youths’ professionnal trajectories. We show that being assigned to a caseworker whose value added is one standard deviation (sd) above the average caseworker increases the probability of employment by 0.1 sd, and the number of days of employment by 0.2 sd, within two years after the first meeting. We observe similar effects on training, especially for low-educated males. Those caseworkers have numerous contacts with theirs youths and direct them specifically to job and training offers.