The effects of occupational mobility on wages of rehabilitated workers in Brazil

•The main results in the analyzed sectors are positive for rehabilitated workers.•Workers originally linked to industrial occupations obtained higher levels of hourly wages.•The dynamic effects show that there is a downward trend over time of hourly wages.•Changes in the level of education and type of occupation may explain the positive effect on wages. This work investigates how occupational mobility, after a professional rehabilitation process, affects the hourly wages of workers who are inserted in the formal job market in the commerce, services and industry sectors of Brazil. For that purpose, a data panel was used with individual information from the Annual List of Social Information (Relação Anual de Informações Sociais- RAIS) for the period of 2007 to 2016. The methodology used was the Staggered Difference in Differences and dynamic treatment effects, through an event study design. The results show a positive effect of occupational mobility on hourly wages in the sectors analyzed, however, this effect is decreasing in the period after the professional change.