Based on administrative data combining workers’ earnings histories and unemployment insurance benefits, we document short and long term wage losses for a large sample of Uruguayan formal workers with high tenure. The contribution of this paper is to provide original evidence about job separation costs in a developing country, based on a unique array of social security and unemployment insurance administrative micro-data. Our main findings indicate that workers lose around 38 % of their previous wages in the first quarter after separation, and 1 year after, losses are still more than 14 %.