Maternity breaks: Unemployment spells or relevant experience?

• Published in: Journal of economic behavior & organization 2022-06, Vol.198, p.673-681
• Main Author: Tomlin, Bryan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Employment; Field experiment; Maternity
• ISSN: 0167-2681; 1879-1751
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2022.04.015

•Novel mechanism is used to signal maternity in a labor-market correspondence study.•Maternity breaks are associated with a large decrease in employer response-rates.•Declaring a maternity break on one's resume does not remedy lower response rates.•Working as a nanny results in the same call-back-rate as stay-at-home parenting. A correspondence study is used to determine how taking a maternity break from the labor force to raise a child affects a mother's ability to get an administrative job relative to mothers who did not take such a break. Relative to mothers who did not take a maternity break, those who did were about half as likely to receive a response to their application, as were those who spent the same time working as a nanny. Listing “stay-at-home mother” as relevant experience on one's resumé does nothing to shrink this gap. These results are consistent with the effect of unemployment on call-back rates as identified by previous research, suggesting that employers view maternity breaks as a form of unemployment rather than relevant experience.