Learning from Job Offers about Labor Supply Constraints: A Barrier for Women without Work Experience

Labor market surveys often include individuals outside the workforce, but respondents who lack work experience may have inaccurate beliefs about their labor supply preferences and constraints. Using data from an incentivized job preferences elicitation in West Bengal, India, we show that women who are out of the labor force make costly mistakes in assessing whether they would take up future hypothetical jobs. Receiving an employment offer and navigating the subsequent decision process improves women's prediction accuracy. Heterogeneity analysis is more consistent with learning about external constraints such as other household members' preferences rather than internal constraints such as own abilities.