3 ms·
I'm from Wisconsin and am currently reading "Janesville: An American Story", which is about the city of Janesville, WI and what happened when the GM auto plant
by jhbadger 10y ago
I'm from Wisconsin and am currently reading "Janesville: An American Story", which is about the city of Janesville, WI and what happened when the GM auto plant closed in 2008. A lot of subsidies went to retraining the unemployed factory workers because that's supposedly how you are supposed to treat factory closings. But it turns out that when you compare the salaries of the workers who went back to school (tech school or university) versus the ones who just found other employment, the ones who went to school actually ended up earning less on average. Yes, income isn't everything about education, it is supposed to make you a better person and so forth, but such unintuitive results really make you think.
- zeroer 10y agoUnless the laid off workers are randomly assigned to training or finding other work there's a pretty serious selection bias that the people with the best prospects are the least likely seek training.
- grogenaut 10y agoGot any sources for that from the book I can peek at?
- jhbadger 10y agoThe book itself contains an appendix which shows the analysis. It doesn't seem to have been published as a journal article, but it is based on publically available data and basically the same argument was put forth by the author of the book in an article on ProPublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/rare-agreement-obama-romney-ryan-endorse-retraining-for-jobless-but-are-the https://www.propublica.org/article/rare-agreement-obama-romn...