Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

Working Paper Series,
IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy

No 2011:1: Assistant and auxiliary nurses in crisis times: earnings and employment following public sector job loss in the 1990s

Marcus Eliason ()
Additional contact information
Marcus Eliason: IFAU - Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation, Postal: P O Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden

Abstract: This paper studies the earnings and employment consequences of involuntary job loss in Sweden during the crisis years of the 1990s among assistant and auxiliary nurses. These two occupational groups were by far those in the public sector that experienced the largest number of job losses. While public service employment traditionally has been perceived as secure and permanent, Sweden witnessed far-reaching restructuring of the public sector and job loss truly became a reality for public sector employees during these years. The estimates show an immediate annual earnings loss of on average about SEK 12 000 and long-term losses of SEK 5 000 per year. An analysis of the distributional effect shows that the job losses did not affect the whole earnings distribution but mostly the lower part. This suggests that a few bore the whole loss from downsizing but most went on unaffected at least considering earnings and employment. From a policy perspective this points to the importance to early identify these redundant workers and to develop targeted policies improving their situation instead of general policies to all redundant workers.

Keywords: Job displacement; public sector; mass-layoff; earnings losses

JEL-codes: J45; J63; J65

37 pages, January 19, 2011

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