Exposure
The Statistics on Dynamics of Enterprises and Establishments (DEE) register provides information on structural changes within establishments and organizations. Through information from the LISA register on main employer, collected annually on 30 November, it was possible to link persons to the DEE register and to assess if a person had been employed at a workplace that went through a major downsizing. In accordance with the most commonly used definition, we classified employees as exposed to major downsizing if they worked at an establishment that reduced their staff by ≥18% between November 2007 and Nov 2008, Nov 2008 and Nov 2009, Nov 2009 and Nov 2010, or Nov 2010 and Nov 2011, respectively [Those exposed to downsizing were grouped into three categories, depending on their employment situation after the downsizing. Those, who have been referred to as survivors in previous literature were divided into two groups; 1) “stayers”, consisting of those who stayed in the same organization the year after the downsizing and 2) “changers”, containing those who remained employed but changed organization after the downsizing. Those who at the end of the year of downsizing were not gainfully employed or had received more than 180 days with unemployment benefits were categorized as “unemployed”.