How labor market competition shapes workplace information on social media: evidence from Glassdoor reviews

We examine how labor market competition affects the quality of workplace information on social media. Using employer reviews on Glassdoor for U.S. publicly listed firms from 2011 to 2022, we find that reviews become less informative about actual workplace practices when firms face more intense competition for labor, consistent with competition inducing workplace information management. The decline in review informativeness is more pronounced when employees have narrower external networks, when firms are less unionized, and when firms have a smaller review base, suggesting that workplace information management is more likely when labor market information asymmetry is greater. Additional analyses show that positive reviews in highly competitive labor markets predict higher short-term labor inflows but greater subsequent employee turnover, indicating a gap between managed expectations and actual workplace conditions. Taken together, our evidence suggests that labor market competition potentially distorts the crowdsourced signals available to job seekers on anonymous review websites.