In this paper, I study the wage a firm sets to attract high abilityworkers (hipo's) in situationsof unemployment. I … show that the higher unemployment, the larger afirm's incentives to sorthigh and low ability workers. Moreover, workers … will signal their(high) ability in situationsof (high) unemployment only if a job offers a high enough wage. Themain result …

wages tend to increase (i) unemployment, (ii) functional income inequality, and (iii) personal income inequality. We further …