We assess the impact of the decline in manufacturing jobs on the cost of job displacement, using administrative data on firms and workers in Germany. We start by documenting that manufacturing firms traditionally paid substantial wage premia and that these high-wage jobs disappeared disproportionately over time. We then analyse what role such losses in the firm wage premium play in determining wage losses following job displacement. We show that low-skilled workers in manufacturing suffer larger wage losses than the high-skilled after job displacement, and that about half of the wage loss is explained by the firm at which a worker was employed before displacement. Persistent wage losses from layoffs, and the role of the firm in explaining these, have increased over time.