The Fact
Among long-tenured workers displaced during 2023–2025 who were reemployed full time by January 2026, 49.6% were earning less per week than they had earned on the job they lost. BLS defines long-tenured displaced workers here as people who had held the lost job for at least three years.
What This Means
Finding another full-time job does not necessarily restore the income attached to an established career. For about half of these reemployed displaced workers, the new paycheck was smaller than the old one.
Sources
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Worker Displacement: 2023–2025.” USDL-26-1423, August 27, 2026. Displaced Worker Supplement to the Current Population Survey.
- Lachowska, Marta; Mas, Alexandre; and Woodbury, Stephen A. (2020). “Sources of Displaced Workers’ Long-Term Earnings Losses.” American Economic Review 110(10): 3231–3266. The study finds that displaced workers’ earnings losses were driven mainly by lower hourly wage rates that recovered sluggishly; lost firm-specific wage premiums explained only about 17% of losses, while loss of valuable worker-employer matches explained more than half.