Labour market transitions after layoffs: the role of occupational skills

Miriam Rinawi () and Uschi Backes-Gellner
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Miriam Rinawi: Swiss National Bank and Department of Business Administration, University of Zurich
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Miriam Koomen

No 103, Economics of Education Working Paper Series from University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW)

Abstract: We study the role of occupational skills for labour market transitions after layoffs. Drawing on Lazear's skill-weights approach, we develop empirical measures for occupational specificity and the skill distance between occupations to investigate how skills map into job mobility and wages. Our analysis reveals several important insights. First, higher occupational specificity is associated with lower job mobility and longer unemployment duration. However, it is also associated with higher wages. Workers receive a wage premium of about 9% for reemployment in a one standard deviation more specific occupation. These results suggest a risk-return trade-off to educational investments into more specific skills. Second, the skill distance is negatively associated with wages. Workers moving between occupations with similar skill requirements suffer smaller wage losses than those with more distant moves. Thus, skills appear to be transferable across occupations and to play a pivotal role in the determination of wages.

JEL-codes: J24 J62 J63 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2014-12, Revised 2019-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://repec.business.uzh.ch/RePEc/iso/leadinghouse/0103_lhwpaper.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Labour market transitions after layoffs: the role of occupational skills (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iso:educat:0103

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