How far do economic damages go on in employment termination cases?

Economic damages in employment discrimination cases are different from damages in personal injury cases. In a nutshell, the economic damage calculation in employment termination cases needs to take into account that the terminated plaintiff may, and in all likelihood will, obtain alternative employment.

With re-employment income in mind, there are two components that are unique to employment termination cases. One component is the expected amount of time that the plaintiff would have been expected to work at the defendant had they not been wrongly terminated. The other component is the amount of time that it takes before the terminated individual is able to earn wages at their replacement employment that exceed the amount that they would have been expected to earn had they not been terminated.

These two factors generally determine how far economic damages will go into the future. Here are a couple of studies that have looked at these issues.

Duration of Employment, Robert Trout, http://nafe.net/JFE/j16_2_05.pdf and http://nafe.net/JFE/j08_2_06.pdf

Do Terminated Employees Catch Up? Evidence from the Displaced Workers Survey, David Macpherson and Michael Piette, Journal of Forensic Economics 16 (2), 2003, pp. 185-199.