Scientific article
OA Policy
English

Employment and well-being after plant closure: Survey evidence from Switzerland on the mid and long run

First online date2023-12-01
Abstract

How does plant closure affect the employment and well-being of displaced workers? This article presents the results of two surveys of workers at five manufacturing plants two and 11 years after mass layoffs. After two years, two-thirds of displaced workers had been re-employed, one in five workers was still unemployed, and one in 10 workers had retired. A decade after the plant closures, unemployment had fallen below 5%. Overall, post-displacement outcomes in Switzerland were more favourable than in other European plant closures. However, age disparities loomed large. Older workers struggled to find new jobs and often had to accept large wage cuts and unstable jobs. In particular, many workers in their late forties and early fifties were hit hard as they were too young to benefit from early retirement, but too old to start over.

Research groups
Citation (ISO format)
OESCH, Daniel et al. Employment and well-being after plant closure: Survey evidence from Switzerland on the mid and long run. In: Economic and industrial democracy, 2023. doi: 10.1177/0143831X231209825
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Article (Published version)
Identifiers
Journal ISSN0143-831X
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13downloads

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Creation17/01/2024 09:15:20
First validation17/01/2024 09:58:55
Update time17/01/2024 09:58:55
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