While research on nonsearching underscores the importance of unmobilized social capital for job matching and status attainment, relatively little is known about its role and value in different kinds of labor market contexts. Although current research focuses on how personal attributes such as gender, race, and work experience modify the impact of unmobilized social capital on status attainment, some researchers are beginning to look into how broader structures such as employment sector affect the role and value of unmobilized social capital. Using representative survey data from Singapore, this paper shows that meritocracy in the formal state sector does not reduce the importance of unmobilized social capital for status attainment. That unmobilized social capital adds more to status attainment in the state sector as compared with the small business sector underlines the significance of employment sector differences in the extent to which unmobilized social capital is useful for getting ahead.
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