Employment and Retirement Following a Late-Career Job Loss

Findings are presented from an ongoing research project that focuses on the economic impacts of late-career job loss on employment and retirement patterns, as well as on earnings and assets. The findings point to large and lasting effects of late-career job loss on wages, assets, employment expectations and actual employment. Viewed in light of the literature on the timing of retirement, these results are consistent with displacement reevaluation of work-retirement tradeoffs. Following displacement, wages and assets decrease considerably, future employment expectations may be revised, and there continue to be significant effects of displacement on employment transitions over many years, even after displaced workers' initial reemployment.