BLS: 3.3 million long-tenured workers displaced through 2025
About 3.3 million Americans who had held their jobs for at least three years were displaced between January 2023 and December 2025, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Thursday, August 27, 2026. Among comparable workers who found new full-time jobs, about half earned as much or more than they had before.
The findings provide a newly released national measure of job-loss and pay-recovery risk. They are retrospective rather than a real-time count of current layoffs: the survey covers the three calendar years through December 2025 and records workers’ employment status in January 2026.
What changed
The number of long-tenured displaced workers rose by 746,000 from the previous survey period, which covered January 2021 through December 2023. The broader total, including workers with less than three years of tenure, reached 7.4 million, up from 6.3 million in the earlier period.
BLS defines a displaced worker as someone age 20 or older who lost or left a job because a plant or company closed or moved, there was insufficient work, or the worker’s position or shift was abolished. Long-tenured workers had been with their employer for at least three years before the displacement.
Finding a new job did not guarantee pay recovery
In January 2026, 66.1% of long-tenured displaced workers were reemployed, close to the 65.7% rate recorded in January 2024. Another 18.3% were unemployed and 15.7% were outside the labor force.
The more significant change involved earnings. Of the workers who had lost full-time wage-and-salary jobs and were reemployed in January 2026, about 49% of those who reported earnings from their lost jobs made as much or more in their new jobs. That was down from about 62% in the prior survey.
The comparison does not mean every displaced worker took a pay cut. It applies only to reemployed full-time wage-and-salary workers who reported prior-job earnings. The BLS earnings table shows weaker pay recovery, but the data do not establish a single cause for the decline.
Where displacement was concentrated
Abolished positions or shifts accounted for 44.4% of long-tenured displacement. Company closures or moves accounted for 32.6%, while insufficient work accounted for 22.9%.
Manufacturing was the largest source of long-tenured displacement, accounting for 19% of the total. Professional and business services accounted for 16%, and retail trade represented 10%. BLS cautions that the industry figures use the 2022 Census industry classification system and are not strictly comparable with earlier industry data.
Older workers had lower reemployment rates
The January 2026 reemployment rate was 72.9% for displaced workers ages 25 to 54. It fell to 57.3% for those ages 55 to 64 and 38.6% for workers 65 and older.
The age pattern indicates that returning to work after a long-tenured job loss was less common among older workers in the January survey. The figures describe employment status at that point and do not measure how long each person searched or whether a new job offered comparable benefits.
How the findings fit the labor market
The data arrived alongside signs that layoffs remained limited while hiring was weak. The Associated Press reported Thursday that weekly applications for unemployment benefits slipped to 203,000, with claims remaining in a historically low range.
That combination can still be difficult for displaced workers. A low level of new layoffs does not ensure that people who already lost jobs will quickly find work at comparable pay. AP reported that employers were limiting both layoffs and new hiring, making the market harder for people trying to reenter work.
The BLS estimates come from a supplement to the Current Population Survey and are subject to sampling and nonsampling error. According to the BLS technical note, the agency generally analyzes CPS data at a 90% confidence level, so smaller differences should be interpreted cautiously.
Workers and policymakers will be watching future displacement surveys, monthly hiring data, wage trends and whether people who lose established jobs regain comparable pay and benefits. The latest figures show that reemployment and earnings recovery are separate outcomes.
Sources
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