October 12, 1999 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Incidence of displaced workers becoming reemployed in the same industry

By February 1998, 48 percent of the reemployed workers who were displaced from their jobs in 1995-96 were working in the same industry as before.

[Chart data—TXT]

Proportions of workers that found jobs within the same broad industry varied considerably. For example, slightly over two-thirds of all services workers were reemployed in that industry while 17 percent of wholesale trade employees obtained new jobs in the wholesale industry.

A large share of displaced workers who changed industries took jobs in services. The percentage of displaced workers who shifted to the services industry was highest for those displaced in retail trade (27 percent), transportation and public utilities (32 percent), and finance, insurance, and real estate (33 percent). This entrance of numerous displaced workers into the services industry is attributed to the rapid expansion of the industry over the 1995-96 period.

Statistics 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 percentages in the chart are for 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.