Employment is a critical issue impacting the economy, and it gained even more attention during the pandemic with the elimination or transformation of tens of millions of jobs around the world. As much of the economy becomes digitized, it is important to consider the effect of social media and social networks on jobs. A team of researchers from Harvard, Stanford, MIT and LinkedIn, led by recent Stanford and MIT Ph.D. graduates Karthik Rajkumar and Guillaume Saint-Jacques, and including MIT Sloan School of Management Prof. Sinan Aral, Stanford Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson and Harvard Business School Prof. Iavor Bojinov, recently conducted the largest experimental study to date on the impact of social media on the labor market and found that weaker social connections have a greater beneficial effect on job mobility than stronger ties.
