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  3. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics
  4. April 2025
  5. Skill Remoteness and Post-layoff Labor Market Outcomes

American Economic Journal:
Macroeconomics

ISSN 1945-7707 (Print) | ISSN 1945-7715 (Online)

Skill Remoteness and Post-layoff Labor Market Outcomes

  • Claudia Macaluso
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics
vol. 17, no. 2, April 2025
(pp. 134–76)
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Abstract

Local skill remoteness captures the dissimilarity between the skill profiles of a worker's last job and other jobs in a local labor market. Higher skill remoteness at layoff is associated with persistently lower earnings after layoff, a higher probability of changing occupation, a lower probability of being reemployed at jobs with similar skill profiles, and a higher propensity to migrate. Jobs destroyed in recessions are also more skill remote than those lost in booms. The local skill remoteness of jobs is an empirically relevant factor to explain the severity and cyclicality of displaced workers' earnings losses and reallocation patterns.

Citation

Macaluso, Claudia. 2025. "Skill Remoteness and Post-layoff Labor Market Outcomes." American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 17 (2): 134–76. DOI: 10.1257/mac.20220062

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • E24 Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
  • E32 Business Fluctuations; Cycles
  • J24 Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
  • J31 Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
  • J61 Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
  • J63 Labor Turnover; Vacancies; Layoffs
  • R23 Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics: Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population; Neighborhood Characteristics