September 23, 1999 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

How long does it take a displaced worker to find a new job?

Among workers who were displaced in 1995 and 1996 and then found a new job, the median amount of time without work was 7.6 weeks.

[Chart data—TXT]

Median weeks without work for reemployed displaced workers varied by age. Workers between the ages of 25 and 34 had the shortest median—4.0 weeks. Those in the 45-54 age group had the longest median, at 11.6 weeks.

For the oldest group, age 55 and over, median weeks without work for the reemployed were lower than for 35-to-44-year-olds and 45-to-54-year-olds. However, workers age 55 and over were much less likely to be reemployed than other workers—the reemployment rate was 60 percent for workers age 55 and above, compared to 89 percent for workers age 25 to 54 years.

Figures cited here are for "long-tenured workers"—those who had been in their jobs for 3 years or longer. Displaced workers lose their jobs because their plants or companies close down or move, their positions or shifts are abolished, or their employers do not have enough work for them to do.

These data are from a February 1998 supplement to the Current Population Survey. Note that the reemployment rate is the proportion of displaced workers employed at the time of the survey. Find more information on displacement in "Worker displacement in the mid-1990s," by Steven Hipple, Monthly Labor Review, July 1999.