The relationship between social network and employment is a classical research area of the New Economic Sociology. However, up to now, most empirical studies in this area merely focus on the network ties actually used and the result of job search. This research endeavors to broaden the scope of relevant studies by studying the relationship between the personal network and the reservation wage of Chinese laid off workers. By analyzing the empirical data, this research shows that one of the most important channels for the laid off workers to get information from the labor market is through their personal network, or, more precisely, through the weak ties in their network. The weak ties function mainly as providing better information rather than providing more influential or substantial help. Moreover, the impact of institutional background is also studied in this research. We find that the importance of social network in job searching is weakening with the construction of Chinese labor market, while the formal institutional factors like human capital are showing more and more prominent effects in this process.
