Book excerpt: The high-tech sector was a major driving force behind the Canadian economic recovery of the late 1990s. It is well known that the tide began to turn quite suddenly in 2001 when sector-wide employment and earnings halted this upward trend, despite continued gains in the rest of the economy. As informative as employment and earnings statistics may be, they do not paint a complete picture of the severity of the high-tech downturn. A decline in employment may result from reduced hiring and natural attrition, as opposed to layoffs, while a decline in earnings among high-tech workers says little about the fortunes of laid-off workers who did not regain employment in the high-tech sector. This study uses a unique administrative data source to address both of these gaps in our knowledge of the high-tech downturn. Specifically, the study explores permanent layoffs in the high-tech sector, as well as earnings losses of laid-off high-tech workers.--Document.