Beyond lost earnings: The long-term impact of jobdisplacement on workers' commuting behavior

Arbeitspapier

We study the long-term impact of job displacement on workers' commuting behavior. Our measures of commuting exploit geo-coordinates of workers' places of residence and places of work, from which we calculate the door-to-door commuting distance and commuting time. Using German employee-employer matched data and an event study design, we identify the causal effect of job loss on workers displaced during a mass layoff. Conditional on finding a new job, workers' commuting distance and commuting time rise sharply after displacement and gradually decline in subsequent years. The recovery is due to employer changes rather than migration, and a larger increase in commuting would mitigate the wage loss due to job displacement. To rationalize our findings, we build an on-the-job search model with heterogeneous firm productivity and commuting distances. Our model predicts a joint recovery of wages and commuting despite a static tradeoff between the two attributes.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Working Paper Series ; No. 44

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics: Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population; Neighborhood Characteristics ; Transportation: Demand, Supply, and Congestion; Travel Time; Safety and Accidents; Transportation Noise
• Subject: commuting ; mobility ; displacement ; job search

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Duan, Yige ; Jost, Oskar ; Jost, Ramona
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): University of Waterloo, Canadian Labour Economics Forum (CLEF)
• (where): Waterloo
• (when): 2022

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/261473
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET