Retail therapy:worker displacement and re-employment in the UK

Technological changes are impacting severely on the retail sector. In contrast to many other industries, recovery of the jobs market in this sector since the 2008 recession has been extremely sluggish. In the United Kingdom there have been several corporate failures and major restructures that have generated large scale redundancies, posing questions about the future of the high street. This paper examines the labour market transitions of workers displaced from jobs in the retail sector. Many return to work quite quickly, but most of these find new employment outside retail. Individual characteristics associated with a speedy return to work are examined in a competing risks framework