Essays on urban spatial structure, job search, and job mobility

This dissertation consists of these essays that address two distinct topics in labor economics: (1) the effects of geographic accessibility to employment opportunities on job search outcomes; and (2) the effects of job skills on wage growth and job mobility. In the first essay, I merge data from the MCSUI Household and Employer Surveys for Atlanta, Boston, and Los Angeles, to examine the impact of access to employment opportunities and dimensions of job search behavior on search duration. I find that job accessibility for less-educated workers in all these MSAs is greatest in predominantly white suburbs more than 10 miles from the centroid of black residential concentration, and that these “job-rich” areas are not well-served by public transportation. The regression results indicate that job search behavior/outcomes are affected by the interaction of the degree of residential location constraints and the proximity to employment opportunities. There are large effects of job accessibility for less-educated blacks and small insignificant effects for similar whites. Simulation results show that black's greater sensitivity to local labor market demand conditions help explain their longer search durations. The decomposition analysis shows that racial differences in the distribution of job accessibility account for one-fourth of the black-white gap in the hazard of successfully completing a job search, and the cumulative effect of racial differences in all spatial search-related variables accounts for half of the black-white gap.; The other two essays analyze the earnings and job dynamics of former/current welfare recipients following 1996 welfare reform. These essays use new survey data of employers and longitudinal data of former/current recipients. The first essay provides evidence on the extent to which job instability and a lack of job skills, occupation-specific experience, and/or training that employers require in “good” jobs impede TANF recipients' abilities to obtain good jobs or successfully make the transition into them from bad ones.; The final essay shows that jobs of different skill requirements differ in their prospects for earnings growth, independent of the workers who fill them. I analyze the interrelationship between wage growth and job turnover, and highlight the importance of jointly considering both processes.