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For every 100 workers who lose their jobs amid mass layoff events, enrollment at community colleges increases by three students within the next three years, according to a new research paper published last week in Education Finance and Policy, a peer-reviewed academic journal.
The researchers also found an increase in credential completion by two community college students for every 100 workers involved in a mass layoff. And the paper found that the bulk of this effect occurs in short-term certificate programs, not associate degree completion. The researchers also wrote that displaced workers are more likely to enroll in career and technical areas, including construction, manufacturing and allied health certificate programs, rather than academic fields focused on transfer to four-year colleges.
"In sum, we find evidence that workers respond to mass layoffs by seeking short-duration degrees and certificates that are generally in fields with higher labor market returns. This is consistent with the idea that displaced workers seek to make new investments in specific human capital and that there are high opportunity costs for their time," wrote the paper's co-authors, Andrew Foote, a senior economist at the U.S. Census Bureau, and Michel Grosz, an economist at the Federal Trade Commission.
The study relied on mass layoff events as a measure of local labor market downturns, with data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 1996 to 2013. It adds to findings from a recent working paper on the impact of mass layoffs in Ohio on public college enrollments.
The new research comes amid worries the current recession may not have the countercyclical effect on college enrollments seen in previous economic downturns. While early fall term data found enrollments holding steady at public four-year institutions, they were down 3.8 percent at private four-year colleges and 7.5 percent at community colleges, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
Likewise, new BLS data released Friday showed deep equity gaps in the economic recovery of recent months, reinforcing concerns that the disruption to Americans' work and educations is being disproportionately felt by Latino, Black and lower-income people, as well as by women who are leaving the workforce.
For example, roughly one-third of Black Americans have recovered jobs lost in the crisis, while 60 percent of white and Asian Americans recovered jobs. And 865,000 women dropped out of the labor force in September, compared to 216,000 men.
