The key finding of this paper is that women Workforce Investment Act (WIA) trainees select higher-return fields than men but men usually have higher returns than women in the same field. Among men, the higher the level of education, the greater the proportion who select high-return fields; the reverse is true for women. Finally, most men select fields that are predominantly male, and vice versa for women, even though gains among men and women making unconventional choices are often large. Thus, there is considerable room for men and women to increase their gains by altering their choice of field.

We exploit administrative data combining workers' earnings histories with information about their firms to estimate the magnitude and temporal pattern of displaced workers' earnings losses. We find that high-tenure workers separating from distressed firms suffer long-term losses averaging 25 percent per year. In addition, we find that displaced workers' losses: (i) begin mounting before their separations, (ii) depend only slightly on their age and sex, (iii) depend more on local labor-market conditions and their former industries, (iv) are not, however, limited to those in a few sectors, and (v) are large even for those who find new jobs in similar firms.