What's the Inside Scoop? Challenges in the Supply and Demand for Information about Job Attributes

Workers struggle to understand prospective jobs and employers. Glassdoor is an online platform that offers jobseekers information about prospective employers from other workers' volunteered reviews. Analyzing Glassdoor data reveals how jobseekers share and use this information. Jobseekers rate reviews of employers more helpful if they contain more-negative information, but such information is relatively scarce. Volunteers supplying negative information are more likely to conceal aspects of their identity, degrading the supplied information's value. Concealment is more likely in reviews for smaller firms and from current employees, where retaliation risk is higher. While workers demand information about some workplace attributes more than others, supply and demand for such information is imbalanced. Across firms, not all hard-to-observe yet desirable attributes improve with easier-to-observe pay, providing rationale for why jobseekers value firm-specific information. Reputation institutions provide valuable but partial solutions to workers' information problems