Does Multiskilling Matter? Evidence from Displaced Workers

Using Displaced Worker Surveys merged with occupational information on multiskilling from other sources, we examine the relationship between multiskilling, earnings, and displacement-induced earnings losses. Overall, we find that workers in multiskilled jobs earn more, both in the multiskilled job and in the job they locate after displacement. Since the latter differential outweighs the former by a small but statistically significant amount, multiskilling mitigates displacement-induced earnings losses. Controlling for the total training time required for the job, however, multiskilling is associated with lower earnings in both the predisplacementand postdisplacement jobs. Since the latter effect is smaller than the former, a small prophylactic effect against displacementinduced wage losses exists in this sense as well.