August 06, 2004 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Displaced workers' earnings at new jobs

Of the 3.2 million reemployed displaced workers who lost full-time wage and salary jobs during the 2001-03 period, 2.6 million were working in such jobs in January 2004. (The remaining reemployed workers had part-time wage and salary jobs or were self-employed or unpaid family workers.)

Earnings relative to those of lost job, workers displaced in 2001-03 who were reemployed in January 2004
[Chart data—TXT]

Of the reemployed full-time wage and salary workers, 43 percent were earning as much or more in their new jobs as they had earned on the job they lost. About one-sixth experienced an increase in earnings of 20 percent or more.

Fifty-seven percent of workers who were displaced from full-time wage and salary jobs and who were reemployed in such jobs had earnings that were lower than those on the lost job. About one-third experienced earnings losses of 20 percent or more.

These data come from the Current Population Survey (CPS). To learn more about displaced workers, see "Worker Displacement, 2001-03" (PDF) (TXT), USDL 04-1381. Displaced workers are defined as persons 20 years of age and older who lost or left jobs because their plant or company closed or moved, there was insufficient work for them to do, or their position or shift was abolished. The data cited here are for "long-tenured workers"—those who had worked for their employer for 3 years or longer at the time of displacement.

 

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