This article examines whether and to what extent employers’ hiring preferences regarding male and female applicants’ cognitive and noncognitive skills signals vary with the regional and occupational recruitment context. According to the job-competition model, supply and demand might increase or decrease young people’s opportunities over and above the effect of inequalities linked to individuals’ ascribed characteristics and education. Few studies have considered the interrelatedness of regional and occupation-specific supply and demand and how this affects employers’ hiring preferences in youth labor markets. I analyze a factorial survey experiment conducted on the German apprenticeship market, which was integrated into a larger representative employer survey. Employers evaluated a randomly assigned set of résumés and indicated how likely it was that each applicant would be invited to a job interview or employment test. Statistics on regional and occupational supply and demand and the occupational gender composition were matched to the employers. The results indicated that employers favored applicants with better skills signals and preferred male applicants in male-dominated occupations. Further, employers who encountered or anticipated recruitment difficulties in their region and occupation rated applicants with the same skills signals more positively than employers in contexts with applicant oversupply. However, female applicants did not receive significantly higher ratings in male-dominated occupations in contexts with excess employer demand, nor did the gender gap in ratings decrease considerably.

本文研究了雇主对男性和女性申请人的认知和非认知技能信号的雇用偏好是否以及在何种程度上随地区和职业招聘环境的变化而变化。根据工作竞争模型，除了与个人归因于特征和教育的不平等有关的影响外，供求可能会增加或减少年轻人的机会。很少有研究考虑区域和特定行业供求之间的相互关系，以及这如何影响雇主在青年劳动力市场上的雇用偏好。我分析了在德国学徒制市场上进行的析因调查实验，该实验已整合到较大的代表性雇主调查中。雇主评估了一组随机分配的简历，并指出了邀请每位申请人参加工作面试或就业测试的可能性。区域和职业供求情况和职业性别构成的统计数据与用人单位相匹配。结果表明，雇主偏爱具有更好技能信号的申请人，而偏爱男性占主导地位的职业的男性申请人。此外，在申请人供过于求的情况下，在其所在地区遇到或预期有招聘困难的雇主和具有相同技能的职业等级申请人比雇主更积极地发出信号。但是，在雇主需求过大的情况下，女性申请人在男性主导的职业中没有获得更高的评分，评分中的性别差距也没有显着减少。