Young jobseekers in developing countries often struggle to get on the career ladder. One reason could be that finding and then keeping a new job is psychologically challenging. The stress of rejection and uncertainty may discourage jobseekers from applying ‘enough’, and anxiety about work may affect performance in interviews or when starting work. Yet the economic benefits of psychological interventions to help jobseekers cope with work- and job search-related anxiety have been little studied in developing countries.
Young, high-school educated jobseekers in urban Africa have difficulty searching for and retaining formal-sector jobs (Abel et al. 2019; Abebe et al. 2021, 2022, Donovan et al. 2023). Psychological scarring from living in poverty or resource instability affects economic decision-making in high-income countries (Malmendier and Wachter 2022). Given the high prevalence of such traumas in developing countries, past trauma may inhibit current job search, potentially by reducing search effort or confidence to target better jobs. Yet few studies propose interventions to counteract these effects.
We propose to test if a highly scalable therapy, targeted at jobseekers and administered online with support by lay counsellors, affects job search, employment and on-the-job productivity in Nairobi, Kenya. Our target population is the 93 million young Africans between 15 and 35 years old who are unemployed or vulnerably employed in urban areas, of whom 1 million live in Kenya (African Development Bank 2016).
Urbanisation across Sub-Saharan Africa has led to a rapid increase in the availability of formal jobs. Demand for these jobs has also risen considerably, as adolescent populations grow faster than the rest of the population. For young people from slums or rural areas, landing a formal job in Africa's big cities can be transformative. Retail, hospitality, and services yield higher wages and better conditions than precarious livelihoods in agriculture or informal work. Despite this, youth unemployment across Africa’s fastest growing cities remains high.
This unemployment may be the result of sub-optimal job search behaviour (Carranza et al., 2022; Abel et al., 2020). Our psychological intervention deliberately targets improvements in job search behaviour- both in terms of quality of applications, and more well-directed applications. Further, we also seek to evaluate performance and behaviour while 'on-the-job'. Broadly, we aim to draw conclusions about how mental health interacts with each stage of an individual's labour force participation, and therefore inform workplace organisation and policies for hiring and retaining employees. Previous studies have investigated the potential for psychological interventions to help jobseekers in other contexts. Metts et al (2023) study a cognitive behavioral therapy program for jobseekers with social anxiety in the USA. Our psychological intervention builds closely on this intervention, while of course being evaluated in a different context with a different population.
Evidence from other economic domains suggests there is additional reason to believe that cognitive-behavioral therapy programs in low-income contexts may yield benefits. For instance, Haushofer, Mudida and Shapiro (2023) study the effects of brief cognitive behavioral therapy on income and consumption for people living in rural Kenya and Barker et al (2022) study the effects of brief cognitive behavioral therapy on economic status for people living in rural Ghana. Studies in Pakistan and India have also evaluated the effects of cognitive behavioral therapy programs on economic beliefs, investment decisions and willingness to work (Baranov et al. 2020, Bhat et al 2022).
Our research project aims to study how anxiety, stress and mental health affect the job search process and other labour market outcomes. Specifically, we aim to:
- Study whether jobseekers’ past life experiences and mental health predict job search anxiety, search strategies, application and job performance.
- Evaluate whether a psychological intervention to reduce fear of rejection and work-related anxiety can improve job-finding rates, search effort, the total number of applications, employment rates, interview performance and performance (productivity) in tasks that participants might do in a job.
We propose a large-scale (n=2400) individual-level randomized controlled trial of a culturally adapted and scalable version of the work-related cognitive behavioral therapy (WCBT) program. Craske and Himle developed and tested this face-to-face with low-income jobseekers in Detroit and Los Angeles (Craske et al. 2023). WCBT trains jobseekers to tackle job-search- and work-related anxieties by challenging ‘anxious thoughts’ and confronting feared situations such as interviews or negative feedback in structured ‘exposure therapy’. We would develop and test a five-module self-guided online version with peer mentor support by phone (as in Moffett et al 2023).
Trial participants will complete online modules in the lab, giving an upper bound on compliance and intervention effects at scale but enabling measurement of mechanisms. Control group jobseekers will be randomized to either a pure control group or an active control group who spend the same amount of time as WCBT in the study lab applying to jobs online, and who receive the same participation payments, concrete information and chance to meet other jobseekers as in WCBT.
We expect that the WCBT intervention will increase (1) employment rates and wages in endline surveys at 3 and 12 months (2) productivity and attendance at a temporary call center/data entry job where we randomly employ some participants. The sample will be stratified on past trauma at baseline, enabling testing for heterogeneous effects. We will measure mechanisms through repeated online surveys of mental health, job search activities and outcomes, beliefs about the labor market and returns to search effort, and performance in a recorded video interview.
Piloting is underway with analysis pending.