TY - JOUR AU - Speiser, Amélie PY - 2021 DA - 2021/01/04 TI - Back to work: the effect of a long-term career interruption on subsequent wages in Switzerland JO - Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics SP - 1 VL - 157 IS - 1 AB - This paper measures the effect of a long-term career interruption on wages after re-employment. Using data from the Swiss Household Panel (SHP) and a fixed effects estimation method allows us to account for time-constant unobserved heterogeneity. We find a significant wage penalty of about 7% in the first year after re-employment if a worker takes up a job with the same characteristics as the job previously held. This wage penalty finally vanishes after 5 to 6 years. Conducting subsample analyses for men and women, we uncover underlying heterogeneity of the effect. Compared to women, men tend to suffer more from a long-term career interruption, both in terms of a higher wage penalty during the first year of re-employment and a larger subsequent recovery time. Our findings support the assumption that human capital depreciation is not the only reason for wage penalties after re-employment. SN - 2235-6282 UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/s41937-020-00068-4 DO - 10.1186/s41937-020-00068-4 ID - Speiser2021 ER -