Using survey data from the German Socio‐Economic Panel (SOEP), this paper analyses the extent to which alternative income sources, reactions within the household context, and redistribution by the state attenuate earnings losses after job displacement. Applying propensity score matching and fixed effects estimations, we find that income from self‐employment reduces the earnings gap only slightly and severance payments buffer losses in the short run. On the household level, we find little evidence for an added worker effect whereas redistribution by the state within the tax and transfer system mitigates income losses substantially.

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Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we analyse the incidence and worker-level consequences of on-call work, a work arrangement that allows employers to adjust their employees’ working times flexibly to the workload. We find that around 4%–5% of the workforce was employed in on-call work between 2014 and 2019. On-call workers are on average less educated, have lower tenure and more unemployment experience. They are also more often employed in marginal part-time jobs and smaller firms. On-call workers have a higher discrepancy between contractual and actual working hours and a higher probability of having no working hours stipulated in their contracts, which points towards less security regarding working hours and expected incomes. We also find evidence for lower wages and decreased subjective well-being along various dimensions but these results only apply to women and not to men. JEL Classification: J80, J28, J31

This paper deals with the question how workers’ labour market and non-monetary outcomes are impacted by a negative sector-specific labour demand shock. This issue is analysed in a setting of rapid structural change that happened in Eastern Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The sector-specific labour demand shock can be assumed to be exogenous to other worker characteristics as it was not anticipated and as career planning was highly restricted in the GDR. Using survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), I find considerable and partly persistent losses in labour market outcomes of workers from declining compared to booming industries. Life satisfaction of workers from declining industries is decreased in the short run whereas the probability to move to the West and to identify with a left-wing political party is increased merely in the longer run.