What’s Holding Back Employment in the Recovery from the COVID-19 Pandemic? (original) (raw)
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An Examination of the Employment Recovery in the United States in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic
European Journal of Business and Management Research, 2021
The “shock” of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic set about wholesale changes across American life, impacting the way we socialized, shopped, and yes, worked. There were significant disruptions across the business landscape in the United States, accompanied by significant job losses, starting in March 2020. In this article, we examine the size and scope of the changes in employment that took place in the U.S. at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and during the recovery period up through April 2021. Utilizing official government data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the author examines how the pandemic caused both widespread job losses and record-setting levels of unemployment but had differential effects across a variety of industries. Then, the author looks at the recovery period, examining the recovery in employment has been unequally distributed across the United States, with differentiations between both urban and rural areas and between metropolitan areas across the county...
The Journal of Economic Inequality
This paper examines employment patterns by wage group over the course of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States using microdata from two well-known data sources from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: the Current Employment Statistics and the Current Population Survey. We find establishments paying the lowest average wages and the lowest wage workers had the steepest decline in employment and experienced the most persistent losses. We disentangle the extent to which the effect observed for low wage workers is due to these workers being concentrated within a few low wage sectors of the economy versus the pandemic affecting low wage workers in a number of sectors across the economy. Our results indicate that the experience of low wage workers is not entirely due to these workers being concentrated in low wage sectorsfor many sectors, the lowest wage quintiles in that sector also has had the worst employment outcomes. From April 2020 to May 2021, between 23% and 46% of the decline in employment among the lowest wage establishments was due to within-industry changes. Another important finding is that even for those who remain employed during the pandemic, the probability of becoming part-time for economic reasons increased, especially for lowwage workers.
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Social Sciences & Humanities Open, 2021
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As labor markets in recent decades have become increasingly volatile and precarious, more workers are susceptible to working conditions threatening their economic security. COVID-19 has further laid bare such economic insecurity from holding a precarious job. We examined the association between precarious employment and the probability of losing income or a job during COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A multivariate regression analysis was conducted using a cross-sectional data set collected in May 2020 in the United States. Results: Our results confirm a strong positive association between precarious employment and losing work or income. Specifically, holding part-time work in the service sector, and feeling disempowered in the workplace, receiving low material rewards, having few benefits, and experiencing obstacles in exercising rights all significantly doubled the probability of losing income or jobs. Conclusion: Our analysis underscores the increasing vulnerability faced by our workforce and how a public health crisis magnifies the dire consequences of a precarious job.
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COVID-19 pandemic has radically transformed our working lives and the labour market. Many workers have faced a digital leap in their working conditions as workplaces have closed their doors. At the same time, a number of workers unable to work from home have faced temporary or permanent layoffs. In the beginning of April 2020, the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimated that COVID-19 will likely lead to a loss of 195 million full-time jobs globally by the end of this year. For Europe, the estimate was around 12 million lost full-time jobs. While the numbers are based on estimated lost working hours, they only reflect the impact on full-time jobs, without considering those employed on informal, parttime and short-term conditions. In reality, the number could be much larger.
The Heterogeneous Labor Market Impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020
The pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing inequalities 1 Individuals in low-earning jobs much more likely to lose employment during the pandemic 2 Partly due to larger impacts of pandemic on employment in low-paying occupations and industries 3 But individuals from disadvantaged groups also more likely to lose employment when compared to others with the same job background 4 Low earners have benefited less from post-April 2020 employment recovery 5 CARES Act provisions were strongly progressive, but recipiency rates among displaced low earners were low The Heterogeneous Labor Market Impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic Cortes & Forsythe (York & UIUC) Introduction Data Distributional Impacts Demographic Groups Earnings Public Policy Conclusions Key Findings The pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing inequalities 1 Individuals in low-earning jobs much more likely to lose employment during the pandemic 2 Partly due to larger impacts of pandemic on employment in low-paying occupations and industries 3 But individuals from disadvantaged groups also more likely to lose employment when compared to others with the same job background 4 Low earners have benefited less from post-April 2020 employment recovery 5 CARES Act provisions were strongly progressive, but recipiency rates among displaced low earners were low The Heterogeneous Labor Market Impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic Cortes & Forsythe (York & UIUC) Introduction Data Distributional Impacts Demographic Groups Earnings Public Policy Conclusions Key Findings The pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing inequalities 1 Individuals in low-earning jobs much more likely to lose employment during the pandemic 2 Partly due to larger impacts of pandemic on employment in low-paying occupations and industries 3 But individuals from disadvantaged groups also more likely to lose employment when compared to others with the same job background 4 Low earners have benefited less from post-April 2020 employment recovery 5 CARES Act provisions were strongly progressive, but recipiency rates among displaced low earners were low The Heterogeneous Labor Market Impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic Cortes & Forsythe (York & UIUC) Introduction Data Distributional Impacts Demographic Groups Earnings Public Policy Conclusions Key Findings The pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing inequalities 1 Individuals in low-earning jobs much more likely to lose employment during the pandemic 2 Partly due to larger impacts of pandemic on employment in low-paying occupations and industries 3 But individuals from disadvantaged groups also more likely to lose employment when compared to others with the same job background 4 Low earners have benefited less from post-April 2020 employment recovery 5 CARES Act provisions were strongly progressive, but recipiency rates among displaced low earners were low The Heterogeneous Labor Market Impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic Cortes & Forsythe (York & UIUC) Introduction Data Distributional Impacts Demographic Groups Earnings Public Policy Conclusions Key Findings The pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing inequalities 1 Individuals in low-earning jobs much more likely to lose employment during the pandemic 2 Partly due to larger impacts of pandemic on employment in low-paying occupations and industries 3 But individuals from disadvantaged groups also more likely to lose employment when compared to others with the same job background 4 Low earners have benefited less from post-April 2020 employment recovery 5 CARES Act provisions were strongly progressive, but recipiency rates among displaced low earners were low The Heterogeneous Labor Market Impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic Cortes & Forsythe (York & UIUC) Introduction Data Distributional Impacts Demographic Groups Earnings Public Policy Conclusions Key Findings The pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing inequalities 1 Individuals in low-earning jobs much more likely to lose employment during the pandemic 2 Partly due to larger impacts of pandemic on employment in low-paying occupations and industries 3 But individuals from disadvantaged groups also more likely to lose employment when compared to others with the same job background 4 Low earners have benefited less from post-April 2020 employment recovery 5 CARES Act provisions were strongly progressive, but recipiency rates among displaced low earners were low The Heterogeneous Labor Market Impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic
Introduction: the Critical Connection Between COVID-19 and Employment
The Indian Journal of Labour Economics
organized a two-day Virtual Conference on the COVID-19 Crisis and Employment on 8 and 9 June 2020. Many leading researchers from India and elsewhere participated. Short notes based on the presentations, along with some additional contributions, have been collected in this symposium in the Indian Journal of Labour Economics. The catastrophic impact of the pandemic on health and mortality has been widely documented elsewhere. Here we focus on the economic consequences. This Introduction sets the scene for the detailed analysis in the articles that follow.
Understanding labour market disruptions and job losses amidst COVID-19
Journal of Social and Economic Development
This paper examines the impact of COVID-19 pandemic-induced lockdown on labour market in India. By using the data of centre for monitoring Indian economy (CMIE)'s consumer pyramids household survey (CPHS), the paper analyses the magnitude and nature of job losses and consequent unprecedented rise in unemployment across gender, social group, occupations during April-June 2020. It finds widespread job losses in labour market with some sections of the society, including small traders, self-employed, migrant workers, daily wage labourers, youth and women being worst affected, who mostly work in the informal sector of the Indian economy. Agriculture sector acted as a sponge by absorbing surplus labour during the times of COVID-19, which was being gradually vacated earlier over the years due to several well-known reasons. The rate of recovery in labour market has been comparatively much slower in case of salaried jobs, youth employment, particularly in rural areas and with elementary education. The economic consequences such disruptions on employment front were even much more serious as a very low percentage of households reporting improvement in their incomes. The most worrying aspect is that though the return to normalcy may take some time, there has been general recessionary trends in employment in India, which have been visible much before the COVID-19 crisis. The policy measures need to be extraordinary in such difficult times, focusing on securing employment and welfare of affected workers through sound and effective social protection programmes along with a major drive for promoting labour-intensive economic activities such as micro-and small enterprises, extension of employment security to poor urban households and skilling/reskilling of labour force to work in post-COVID-changed situations.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2021
The resilience of the healthcare industry, often considered recession-proof, is being tested by the COVID-19 induced reductions in physical mobility and restrictions on elective and non-emergent medical procedures. We assess early COVID-19 effects on the dynamics of decline and recovery in healthcare labor markets in the United States. Descriptive analyses with monthly cross-sectional data on unemployment rates, employment, labor market entry/exit, and weekly work hours among healthcare workers in each healthcare industry and occupation, using the Current Population Survey from July 2019−2020 were performed. We found that unemployment rates increased dramatically for all healthcare industries, with the strongest early impacts on dentists’ offices (41.3%), outpatient centers (10.5%), physician offices (9.5%), and home health (7.8%). Lower paid workers such as technologists/technicians (10.5%) and healthcare aides (12.6%) were hit hardest and faced persistently high unemployment, whil...