Fine tuning or re-skilling? Educational strategies of prime-aged displaced workers

While a large literature has documented the substantial and persistent earnings losses often experienced by displaced workers, relatively little is known regarding the educational strategies that prime-aged displaced workers use to cope with job loss. Specifically, the extent to which Canadian laid-off workers undergo re-skilling, i.e. enter new fields of study after losing their job or simply upgrade their skills and remain within their initial fields of study is currently unknown. This study fills this information gap using data from the Post-Secondary Information System (PSIS) in conjunction with Statistics Canada’s Longitudinal Worker file (LWF) and the Census of Population of 2006.