Search Results
Discussion Paper
Wage Insurance: A Potential Policy for Displaced Workers
Despite the existing safety net, worker displacement continues to have severe consequences that motivate the consideration of new social insurance programs. Wage insurance is a novel policy that temporarily provides additional income to workers who lose their job and become re-employed at a lower wage. In this post, we draw on evidence from our recent working paper analyzing the effects of a U.S. wage insurance program on worker earnings and employment outcomes. Among workers displaced by international trade, we find that eligibility for wage insurance increased the probability of employment ...
Working Paper
Earnings losses of displaced workers
Working Paper
Why Do Earnings Fall with Job Displacement?
The earnings of workers are reduced for many years after being displaced from their jobs, and those workers and their families face increased risk of other problems as well. The ills suffered by displaced workers motivated several recent expansions of government programs, including the unemployment insurance system, and have spurred calls for wage insurance that would provide longerrun earnings replacement. However, while the magnitude of the losses is relatively clear, the theory of why displacement matters is scattered and somewhat undeveloped. Much of the policy discussion appears to ...
Newsletter
Public and private sector compensation: what is affordable in this recession and beyond? -- a conference summary
On February 26, 2009, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and The Civic Federation hosted a forum to examine the differences in wages and benefits between the public sector and private sector and to discuss best practices in work force sustainability.
Journal Article
Is retraining displaced workers a good investment?
Newsletter
Recent trends in job displacement
Journal Article
Globalization and job loss, from manufacturing to services
Journal Article
Long-term earnings losses of high-seniority displaced workers
Report
Wage Insurance for Displaced Workers
Wage insurance provides income support to displaced workers who find reemployment at a lower wage. We analyze wage insurance in the context of the U.S. Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program by merging linked employer-employee Census data to TAA petitions and leveraging a discontinuity in eligibility based on worker age. Wage insurance eligibility increases short-run employment probabilities and leads to higher long-run cumulative earnings. We find shorter non-employment durations largely drive increased long-term earnings among workers eligible for wage insurance. Our results are ...