C41 - Duration Analysis; Optimal Timing StrategiesReturn

Unemployment belongs to the most serious economic and social problems of developed countries. The problem can be described by the unemployment rate or number of the unemployed, in this text a duration of unemployment is of interest. The unemployment duration in the Czech Republic in 2008, 2010 and 2014 is analysed with the use of survival analysis methods and a finite mixture of lognormal distributions is used to describe an overall distribution of unemployment spell as well as the component distributions given by gender and education of the unemployed. Data from the Labour Force Sample Survey (performed by the Czech Statistical Office) are used for the statistical analysis. The unemployment duration is given in the questionnaire of the survey in intervals, we supposed the data to be right or interval censored, exact values of the unemployment duration are not included in the data. The strong positive effect of education on the duration of unemployment is quantified, as well as a less distinctive gender gap. An increase in unemployment duration is quantified for the period of economic crisis with respect to periods before (2008) and after (2014) the crisis.