Gender gaps of the unemployed: What drives diverging labor market outcomes?

Analyzing gender gaps of unemployed job-seekers, this study uniquely complements the broad literature focussing predominantly on gender gaps of employed workers. I consider a broad range of labor market outcomes, and disentangle the factors driving the labor market gaps of unemployed men and women. I show that unemployed women perform worse on the labor market due to earlier choices in occupations, their labor force attachment, and working time. By contrast, regional labor market disparities including differences of local employment offices, which are assigned to place unemployed job-seekers, are of minor importance. Married women and those with young children perform particularly bad compared to men. High unexplainable gender gaps for these groups suggest that family-related preferences, employer discrimination, and institutional settings matter for unemployment duration and the quality of reemployment.