The Value of Personality. Exploring the demand for the Big 5 traits in the UK

Expositor | Matias Golman | University of Nottingham

Abstract | This study investigates the demand for the Big 5 personality traits and their impact on employers’ wage offerings. We build a novel dataset out of text retrieval from new online vacancies in the UK for the period 2017 to 2022. By constructing dictionaries tailored to the Big 5, we pinpoint the presence and intensity of personality traits within job advertisements. Our findings reveal that two-thirds of vacancies demand at least one personality trait, and this is growing over time. We found a negative correlation between the emphasis on personality traits and the offered wages. This result is similar to the small number of studies that look at job adverts, but different to studies using worker-level data. The wage penalty varies significantly by occupation, firm and job characteristics. In particular, the penalty is larger in occupations with a large share of highly educated workers. On the contrary, traits are rewarded in low seniority positions and full-time arrangements. This research sheds light on the complex interplay between the demand for personality traits and wages offered in the UK job market.

Matias Golman es estudiante de doctorado de la Universidad de Nottingham, Inglaterra. Se especializa en diversos tópicos de Economía Laboral. Es Licenciado y Magister en Economía por la Universidad de Buenos Aires, y Magister en Economía Laboral Aplicada por la Universidad de Turin, Italia. Se ha desarrollado como consultor de distintos organismos, incluyendo CIPPEC, el Banco Mundial y la Organización Internacional del Trabajo.