Effects Of Job Loss Research Articles

Economic Crises and Unemployment Persistence: Analysis of Job Losses During the Finnish 1990s Recession

This study estimates the effect of job loss for Finnish workers displaced during a severe recession in the early 1990s. The setting provides a sample of workers of which over 90% experienced unemployment after losing a job due to plant closure. We use linked employer-employee data to follow these workers up to 16 years after the job loss and to construct a closely matched comparison group of non-displaced workers. We estimate over 58% initial drop in employment and earnings after the job loss. At the end of follow-up, women's employment and earnings recover fully while men's employment remains 1–5% lower relative to the comparison groups and they suffer a 5–8% earnings loss. We also find large effects on long-term unemployment that diminish slowly and long-lasting effects on poverty risk.

Intimate Partner Violence in the Great Recession.

In the United States, the Great Recession was marked by severe negative shocks to labor market conditions. In this study, we combine longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study with U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data on local area unemployment rates to examine the relationship between adverse labor market conditions and mothers' experiences of abusive behavior between 2001 and 2010. Unemployment and economic hardship at the household level were positively related to abusive behavior. Further, rapid increases in the unemployment rate increased men's controlling behavior toward romantic partners even after we adjust for unemployment and economic distress at the household level. We interpret these findings as demonstrating that the uncertainty and anticipatory anxiety that go along with sudden macroeconomic downturns have negative effects on relationship quality, above and beyond the effects of job loss and material hardship.

Hitting Them with Carrots: Voter Intimidation and Vote Buying in Russia

From robocalls to vote buying scholars have identified many ways that politicians mobilize voters to the polls. One mobilization tactic that has received less attention, however, is electoral intimidation. We use survey experiments and crowd-sourced electoral violation reports from the 2011-12 election cycle in Russia to explore this understudied phenomenon. We develop a simple argument about the conditions under which voter intimidation is likely to occur. Consistent with arguments about the decline of vote buying in middle-income countries, we find little evidence that vote buying was practiced on a large scale in this election. Voter intimidation, however, was widespread, especially among employed voters and in Russia’s many single company towns where employers have considerable leverage over employees. In these single company towns, the consequences of job loss are so grave that employer intimidation may often be sufficient to induce compliance even without direct monitoring of voter behavior. Outside of company towns where employers have less leverage, active forms of monitoring may supplement intimidation in order to encourage compliance. These results suggest that employers can be reliable vote brokers; that voter intimidation can persist in a middle-income country; and that, under some conditions intimidation may be employed without the need for active monitoring.

Depressive symptoms as a cause and effect of job loss in men and women: evidence in the context of organisational downsizing from the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health.

BackgroundFew studies have examined depression as both a cause and effect of unemployment, but no prior work investigated these relationships in the context of organisational downsizing. We explored whether the exposure to downsizing is associated with subsequent depression (social causation), and whether pre-existing depression increases the risk of being laid off when organisations downsize (health selection).MethodsTwo successive waves of the nationally representative Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health represented the baseline (2008) and follow-up (2010) of this study. Analyses included 196 workers who lost their jobs through downsizing, 1462 layoff survivors remaining in downsized organisations and 1845 employees of non-downsized workplaces. The main outcomes were: (1) Depressive symptoms at follow-up, assessed with a brief subscale from the Symptom Checklist 90, categorised by severity levels (“major depression”, “less severe symptoms” and “no depression”) and analysed in relation to earlier downsizing exposure; (2) Job loss in persons with downsizing in relation to earlier depressive symptoms. The associations were assessed by means of multinomial logistic regression.ResultsJob loss consistently predicted subsequent major depression among men and women, with a somewhat greater effect size in men. Surviving a layoff was significantly associated with subsequent major depression in women but not in men. Women with major depression have increased risks of exclusion from employment when organisations downsize, whereas job loss in men was not significantly influenced by their health.ConclusionsThe evidence from this study suggests that the relative importance of social causation and health selection varies by gender in the context of organisational downsizing. Strategies for handling depression among employees should be sensitive to gender-specific risks during layoffs. Policies preventing social exclusion can be important for female workers at higher risk of depression.

Effects of Job Loss on Self-esteem: Focusing on Gender Difference

Effects of Job Loss on Self-esteem: Focusing on Gender Difference

Pathways into Bankruptcy: Accumulating Disadvantage and the Consequences of Adverse Life Events

This study combines theories of accumulating disadvantage and economic insecurity using the event of bankruptcy to investigate how certain adverse life events jointly affect inequality. I analyze National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data from 1985 through 2008 to highlight the complexities of financial hardship in the path to bankruptcy. By applying hybrid mixed effects models to parse out within‐ and between‐person variation, I show that, in the case of bankruptcy, financial hardship unfolds over a specific series of events, which can lead to the accumulation of disadvantage connected to changes in employment, marital, and health statuses. I find that bankruptcy results from people's recent experiences of illness and marital dissolution, but not always directly from employment disruption. The effects of job loss on bankruptcy become more apparent as these events accumulate over time and limit wealth creation. The timing of events and their relationship with net worth also influence when a person will file for bankruptcy. As a whole, my findings demonstrate how adverse events and financial hardship lead to bankruptcy through multiple pathways.

A Study on Socio-economic Impact of Retrenchment on Workers—with Special Reference to Allahabad

The present study aims to discover the social–economic impact of an unanticipated and involuntary loss of employment retrenchment of workers, evaluating the efficacy of the law in this regard and tries to assess as to how persons who have lost their employment owing to retrenchment cope with the situation. The results or consequences of job loss have been studied by a number of psychologists and social sciences researchers. Their findings have shown that retrenchment has traumatic effects on a person’s life and his or her family. Even the employees who manage to survive, the company, the organization and the whole society experience the ill-effects of retrenchment. The situation in case of retrenchment is impetuous and unalterable. Employees who experience involuntary retrenchment react more negatively to unemployment and are more likely to perceive retrenchment as a one-sided breach of psychological contract with the organization. Some authors have coined the phrase ‘chain of adversity’ to express the downward spiral of misfortune that some workers experience after retrenchment. The psychology literature describes the event (shock of job loss due to retrenchment) as ‘illness’ and the change in personal and career front it initiates as ‘recovery’ from the ‘illness’.

The Effect of Job Loss on Health: Evidence from Biomarkers

The Effect of Job Loss on Health: Evidence from Biomarkers

Community-Wide Job Loss and Teenage Fertility: Evidence From North Carolina

Using North Carolina data for the period 1990-2010, we estimate the effects of economic downturns on the birthrates of 15- to 19-year-olds, using county-level business closings and layoffs as a plausibly exogenous source of variation in the strength of the local economy. We find little effect of job losses on the white teen birthrate. For black teens, however, job losses to 1 % of the working-age population decrease the birthrate by around 2 %. Birth declines start five months after the job loss and then last for more than one year. Linking the timing of job losses and conceptions suggests that black teen births decline because of increased terminations and perhaps also because of changes in prepregnancy behaviors. National data on risk behaviors also provide evidence that black teens reduce sexual activity and increase contraception use in response to job losses. Job losses seven to nine months after conception do not affect teen birthrates, indicating that teens do not anticipate job losses and lending confidence that job losses are "shocks" that can be viewed as quasi-experimental variation. We also find evidence that relatively advantaged black teens disproportionately abort after job losses, implying that the average child born to a black teen in the wake of job loss is relatively more disadvantaged.

The effect of job loss on body weight during an economic collapse

Studies on the relationship between unemployment and body weight show a positive relationship between Body Mass Index (BMI) and unemployment at the individual level, while aggregate unemployment is negatively related to a population's average BMI. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between job loss and changes in body weight following the Icelandic economic collapse of 2008. The analysis relies on a health and lifestyle survey "Heilsa og líðan", carried out by The Public Health Institute of Iceland in the years 2007 and 2009. The sample is a stratified random sample of 9,807 Icelanders between the ages of 18 and 79, with a net response rate of 42.1% for individuals responding in both waves. A linear regression model was used when estimating the relationship between job loss following the economic collapse and changes in body weight. Family income and mental health were explored as mediators. Point estimates indicated that both men and women gain less weight in the event of a job loss relative to those who retained their employment. The coefficients of job loss were only statistically significant for females, but not in the male population. The results from all three models were inconsistent with results from other studies where job loss has been found to increase body weight. However, body weight has been shown to be procyclical, and the fact that the data used were gathered during a severe economic downturn might separate these results from earlier findings.

Does the effect of job loss on psychological distress differ by educational level?

We examine the impact of involuntary job loss on psychological distress and investigate whether the impact differs by educational level using a sample of men drawn from the British Household Panel Study. We expect higher-educated men to suffer less from job loss because they have more resources and better re-employment chances. Alternatively, it could be that, in the long run, lower-educated men adapt better to continued unemployment or downward mobility. Fixed effects regression analyses show that job loss increases distress, but over time the effect wears off and is limited to non-employed men. We find that higher-educated men experience less distress following job loss. These educational differences in the impact of job loss become smaller over time and are mainly driven by re-employment chances.

Introduction to the special issue on job loss

PurposeThe primary purpose of this article is to raise awareness about the need for additional research on job loss. It also aims to provide an introduction to the special issue, and a description of the articles in it.Design/methodology/approachThe article highlights some of the important research on job loss since the early 1990s.FindingsAdditional theory and research is needed to assist the well‐being and the job search process of the unemployed.Research limitations/ implicationsThis article offers suggestions on advancing new research ideas that can be used to assist individuals who have lost their jobs and to organizations that have been involved in a layoff.Practical implicationsThe article argues that knowledge related to the effects of job loss can be used to assist organizations in promoting programs to enhance the well‐being of laid‐off individuals.Social implicationsResearch on job loss is needed to address the problems of laid‐off individuals.Originality/valueThe article provides a contribution to the social issues literature as it raises awareness of the need for additional research on job loss.

Water resource management in New Zealand: Jobs or algal blooms?

New Zealand faces a choice between environmental improvement and dairy industry profitability and employment, since improved water quality in lakes and rivers may require measures that will reduce net farm profit. Environmental valuation studies often consider preferences for employment but rarely focus specifically on the effect of job losses on respondent preferences for environmental improvement. A choice experiment was used to investigate people's willingness to pay for water quality improvements in a typical dairy catchment in the Waikato region of New Zealand. It was found that respondents would be willing to pay for water that is safer for swimming with improvements in clarity and ecological health, but are concerned about job losses, even when they do not expect to be directly affected. This may be explained by the concept of sociality, whereby the influence of direct interpersonal interaction on human behaviour, affects choice behaviour. Findings from this study and ongoing research should allow decision makers to consider both the costs and the benefits of different levels of water quality improvements, so allowing policy makers to identify the most cost effective options for achieving any given improvement in water quality.

Temporary Derailment or the End of the Line? Unemployed Managers at 50

Based on fieldwork conducted at the outset of the current economic downturn, this paper examines the experiences of a group of unemployed managers and professionals in their fifties. Following a review of existing literature, the authors use a methodology to explore how these people incorporate the experience of job loss into their self-images and identities. They identify certain core similarities in the experiences of unemployed professionals and then discern three strategies through which unemployed professionals tried to make sense of their dismissal and sustain their sense of selfhood. The first approached job loss as a temporary career derailment and insisted on seeing a future as a resumption of career, no matter how implausible such a prospect appeared to others. The second saw the job loss as the end of the line, a traumatic event, the product of cruelty, injustice and unfairness, from which there is no prospect of resuming or salvaging a career. The third strategy accepted job loss as a radical discontinuity but refused to lapse into despondency, self-blame or in extreme blame and vilification of others. Instead, it attributed it to social factors, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to other uncontrollable forces, towards which they adopted a philosophical attitude, seeking to live within their means and engage in temporary paid and unpaid work, studies and other creative activities. The term, narrative coping, is proposed as a way of describing each unemployed professional’s struggle to construct a story that offers both meaning and consolation. The paper is intended as a contribution to two academic fields that in the past have generally stayed well clear of each other. One addresses the psychological consequences of job loss, along with coping mechanisms and the effectiveness of interventions intended to aid the unemployed. The second addresses constructions of identity and career among professionals, focusing specifically on the effects of job loss on the way people construct and sustain their life stories.

Job Loss in the Great Recession: Historical Perspective from the Displaced Workers Survey, 1984-2010

The Great Recession from December 2007 to June 2009 is associated with a dramatic weakening of the labor market from which the labor market is now only slowly recovering. The unemployment rate remains stubbornly high and durations of unemployment are unprecedentedly long. I use data from the Displaced Workers Survey (DWS) from 1984-2010 to investigate the incidence and consequences of job loss from 1981-2009. In particular, the January 2010 DWS, which captures job loss during the 2007-2009 period, provides a window through which to examine the experience of job losers in the Great Recession and to compare their experience to that of earlier job losers. These data show a record high rate of job loss, with almost one in six workers reporting having lost a job in the 2007-2009 period. The consequences of job loss are also very serious during this period with very low rates of reemployment, difficulty finding full-time employment, and substantial earnings losses.

Parental Job Loss and Infant Health

Although there exists a large literature documenting various consequences of job loss, this paper is the first to explore the extent to which the health effects of job displacement extend to the children of displaced workers and also the first to consider whether there are any harmful effects for children who are not yet born when the separation occurs. I use detailed work and fertility histories from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to estimate the effect of parents' job displacements on children's birth weights. These data allow for an identification strategy that essentially compares the outcomes of children born after a displacement to the outcomes of their siblings born before using mother fixed effects. I find that husbandsﾒ job losses have significant negative effects on infant health. They reduce birth weights by approximately four and a half percent with suggestive evidence that the effect is concentrated on the lower half of the birth weight distribution.

Reducing Foreclosures: No Easy Answers

This paper takes a skeptical look at a leading argument about what is causing the foreclosure crisis and what should be done to stop it. We use an economic model to focus on two key decisions: the borrower's choice to default on a mortgage and the lender's subsequent choice whether to renegotiate or modify the loan. The theoretical model and econometric analysis illustrate that unaffordable loans, defined as those with high mortgage payments relative to income at origination, are unlikely to be the main reason that borrowers decide to default. In addition, this paper provides theoretical results and empirical evidence supporting the hypothesis that the efficiency of foreclosure for investors is a more plausible explanation for the low number of modifications to date than contract frictions related to securitization agreements between servicers and investors. While investors might be foreclosing when it would be socially efficient to modify, there is little evidence to suggest they are acting against their own interests when they do so. An important implication of our analysis is that policies designed to reduce foreclosures should focus on ameliorating the immediate effects of job loss and other adverse life events rather than modifying loans to make them more affordable on a long-term basis.

Managing industrial decline: the lessons of a decade of research on industrial contraction and regeneration in Britain and other EU coal producing countries

This paper draws on an ongoing 10 year research programme into the social impact of industrial contraction and regeneration on mining communities. Though focusing primarily on the consequences of rationalisation and regeneration for British mining communities, the paper also alludes to the impact of recent policies in Belgium, Germany and Spain. The insights deriving from this research are offered as useful lessons for policymakers in Central and Eastern European countries where similar reductions in mining capacity appear imminent. The potentially negative effects of job loss and employment insecurity on working and former miners and their families are highlighted, emphasising how the decimation of the UK coal industry and its recent privatisation has produced widespread trade union exclusion and marginalisation, while arousing growing concerns for the health and safety of employees. Regeneration strategies in the UK are compared with those implemented by its Western European neighbours. Such a comparison underlines the need for coherent and well integrated policies, backed up by sustained long term funding.

Changes in Earnings Instability and Job Loss

This paper examines the contribution of job loss or displacement to increasing male earnings instability between 1970 and 1991. Earnings instability increased among both displaced and not-displaced men, so changes associated with job loss cannot fully explain rising instability. Changes in the incidence and consequences of job loss did, however, add substantially to growing earnings instability and to the overall variance of earnings. There is evidence that displacement substantially raised earnings volatility for several years after job loss. That effect, combined with increased numbers of recently displaced workers in the 1980s relative to the previous decade, contributed to rising overall earnings instability.

Towards Permanent Insecurity: The Social Impact of Unemployment

Numerous studies have revealed a relationship between unemployment and various other social ills. These include poverty, negative shifts in self-esteem for affected individuals and their families, increased anxiety, stress, and associated increases in physical and mental illness, alcoholism, drug abuse, child abuse and family breakdown. Others have linked unemployment to increased racism and discrimination, suicide rates and crime rates. For much of the post-war period the stresses associated with unemployment were mitigated by a social policy net and a programme of unemployment insurance that, by 1971, covered the great majority of the workforce and provided a significant cushion against the immediate effect of job loss. Since the mid-1970s the social supports available to the unemployed have been eroded by government and, in the mid-1990s, major alterations were made to the programmes. The Employment Insurance reforms of 1996, the replacement of the Canadian Assistance Plan by a Canada Health and Social Transfer that permits workfare as a condition of social assistance, and the devolution of training and active employment measures to the provincial level receive detailed analysis. In a context where a world of work is undergoing rapid change and partial attachments to the labour force - part-time, temporary and individual self-employment - are more common, the effect of Unemployment Insurance and social reforms, combined with an overall economic strategy that privileges inflation and deficit control over employment creation, means that permanent insecurity is replacing the relative social security of an earlier era. The social impact of this situation will be traced.