Studies show that high-tenure displaced workers typically incur substantial long-term earnings losses. As these losses have become increasingly apparent, policy makers have significantly expanded resources for retraining, much of which takes place in regular community college classes. To analyze...

This paper estimates the returns to retraining for older displaced workers--those 35 or older--by estimating the impact that community college schooling has on their subsequent earnings. Our analysis relies on longitudinal administrative data covering workers who were displaced from jobs in...

To adequately evaluate claims that increased worker insecurity had reduced wage growth in the 1990s, research must answer two questions: (1) Has worker insecurity increase?, and (2) Does worker insecurity reduce wage growth? Examining data on displacement rates from the Displaced Workers Surveys...

We use administrative data from the unemployment insurance system State of Washington to study the magnitude of the wage differential associated with work in the temporary services industry. We find that temp wage rates are 15% to 20% below the levels that might have been expected based on...

Using plant-level data from the Plant Capacity Utilization (PCU) Survey, we examine how a manufacturing plant’s use of temporary workers is associated with the nature of its output fluctuations. Our empirical evidence suggests that plants choose temps over perms when they expect output to...

Seemingly short-term labor market shocks, such as job displacements, can have persistent effects on workers’ earnings, employment, job stability, consumption, and access to health insurance. A long literature suggests such changes in workers’ socioeconomic conditions can have potentially...

I consider the estimation of linear regression models when the independent variables are measured with errors whose variances differ across observations, a situation that arises, for example, when the explanatory variables in a regression model are estimates of population parameters based on...

Prior studies indicate that incarcerated women are among the most economically disadvantaged populations in the U.S. In this paper we focus on the links between incarceration and use of the social welfare system. Is prison, for example associated with increased welfare dependency? To better...

The current expansion has delivered the lowest unemployment rates in decades, yet nominal wage growth has remained relatively contained. This suggests to some a shift in the historical relationship between unemployment and wage growth. We look across the states for more timely evidence of a...