SHARE Working Paper Series 60-2021: Occupation and working outcomes during the Coronavirus Pandemic (original) (raw)
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Occupation and working outcomes during the Coronavirus Pandemic
European Journal of Ageing
Using data from the first wave of the SHARE COVID-19 Survey and additional information collected from the previous waves of SHARE (Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe), we explore the effects of job characteristics on two outcomes: (i) the probability of work interruptions and (ii) the length of such interruptions during the first phase of the Coronavirus Pandemic. In order to assess the relationship between job features and labour market outcomes, we define two indexes proxying the pre-COVID-19 technical remote work feasibility as well as the level of social interaction with other people while working. Moreover, we use an indicator that classifies ISCO-08 3-digit job titles based on the essential nature of the good or service provided. We find that job characteristics have been major determinants of the probability of undergoing work interruptions and their duration. In addition, we show that women have been negatively affected by the Pandemic to a much larger extent t...
Mapping home internet activity during COVID-19 lockdown to identify occupation related inequalities
Scientific reports, 2021
During the COVID-19 pandemic, evidence has accumulated that movement restrictions enacted to combat virus spread produce disparate consequences along socioeconomic lines. We investigate the hypothesis that people engaged in financially secure employment are better able to adhere to mobility restrictions, due to occupational factors that link the capacity for flexible work arrangements to income security. We use high-resolution spatial data on household internet traffic as a surrogate for adaptation to home-based work, together with the geographical clustering of occupation types, to investigate the relationship between occupational factors and increased internet traffic during work hours under lockdown in two Australian cities. By testing our hypothesis based on the observed trends, and exploring demographic factors associated with divergences from our hypothesis, we are left with a picture of unequal impact dominated by two major influences: the types of occupations in which people...
Telecommuting Rates During the Pandemic Differ by Job Type, Income, and Gender
Research Papers in Economics, 2021
Author(s): Matson, Grant; McElroy, Sean; Circella, Giovanni; Lee, Yongsung | Abstract: The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic caused massive travel disruptions across the country.nMany people nationwide shifted to telework following stay-at-home orders, while those providing essential operations and services continued to travel to work. The pandemic’s impacts on travel behavior have complex environmental and equity implications. Telecommuting can be a means of decreasing vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions associated with commuter travel and can reduce congestion during peak times. However, not all jobs can be performed from home. Policymakers and regulators who are considering policies to encourage telecommuting to achieve greenhouse gas reduction goals need to consider potential inequities that may arise or be intensified by these policies.Researchers at the University of California, Davis examined the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on telecommuting patterns among va...
Work from home and daily time allocations: evidence from the coronavirus pandemic
Review of Economics of the Household
The emergence and spread of the novel coronavirus in the U.S. were quickly followed by a widespread expansion in remote work eligibility, which, in turn, led to necessary alignments between pre-existing household management schedules and new home-based work schedules for many of those who worked from home (WFH) during the COVID-19 pandemic. We use 24-hour time diary data from the 2010-2020 American Time Use Survey to examine how major daily time allocations of those who WFH changed during the pandemic compared with those who worked away from home (WAFH). Before the pandemic, we find that those who WFH spent significantly less time working, commuting to work, grooming, and eating away from home, but significantly more time sleeping, socializing, relaxing, doing housework, caring for children, shopping, preparing food, and eating at home. During the pandemic, we find generally small and statistically insignificant changes in the time allocations of those who WAFH, but several large and significant changes in uses of time for those who WFH. A noteworthy intra-pandemic increase was in time devoted to labor market work by those who WFH, which almost halved the prepandemic WAFH-WFH difference. Results also show large and significant reductions in time devoted to other activities during the pandemic, including work-related travel, socializing, doing housework, shopping, shopping-related travel, and eating away from home. The intra-pandemic redistribution of time by those who WFH may have health and quality-of-life implications that should be assessed as the pandemic subsides and WFH becomes a more common feature of post-pandemic life.
Gender Work and Organisation , 2020
That the COVID‐19 pandemic has affected the work conditions of large segments of the society is in no doubt. A growing body of journalistic accounts raised the possibility that the lockdown caused by the pandemic affects women and men in different ways, due mostly to the traditionally gendered division of labor in the society. We attempt to test this oft‐cited argument by conducting an original survey with nearly 200 academics. Specifically, we explore the extent to which the effect of the lockdown on child‐care, housework and home‐office environment varies across women and men. Our results show that a number of factors are associated with the effect of the lockdown on the work conditions of academics at home, including gender, having children, perceived threat from COVID‐19, and satisfaction with work environment. We also show that having children disproportionately affects women in terms of the amount of housework during the lockdown.
Socio-economic inequalities in ability to work from home during the coronavirus pandemic
The Economic and Labour Relations Review
The coronavirus pandemic has changed the nature of work, with physical distancing regulations aimed at preventing infections necessitating work-from-home (WFH) arrangements. Studies indicate that many individuals prefer working from home due to fear of contracting the virus at work. However, not all work can be performed from home. Moreover, jobs that are amenable to be performed from home generally pay more, while the ability to WFH will likely increase income inequality. Therefore, we ascertained socio-economic inequalities in ability to WFH among South African employees during the pandemic. We used data from the National Income Dynamics Study-Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey, a nationally representative longitudinal survey of South Africans conducted during the pandemic. We found that the ability to WFH was pro-rich (i.e. concentrated on workers in higher socio-economic classes) in all study periods. The results were robust to the use of different ranking variables and varying the...
Working from home arrangements have been on the rise globally throughout the 21st century. Despite this trajectory, developing economies have trailed developed countries in adopting such arrangements. However, because of COVID-19 lockdowns and social distancing measures, countries such as Uruguay, where teleworking was scarce and unregulated, were forced to adopt this practice to ensure business continuity. Under such conditions, preexisting organizational and individual disparities stratified the likelihood of working from home during the pandemic. Conventional wisdom holds that the main determinants potential-to-telework stems almost exclusively from the nature of jobs themselves. This article expands the traditional understanding of telework determinants by showing that during the first stages of the pandemic individual features of the worker, and organizational and managerial features of the employer, were both determinative of the likelihood that a given worker would work from ...
Pandemics Through the Lens of Occupations
NBER Working Paper 27841, 2020
We outline a macro-pandemic model where individuals can select into working from home or in the market. Market work increases the risk of infection. Occupations differ in the ease of substitution between market and home work and in the risk of infection. We examine the evolution of a pandemic in the model as well as its macroeconomic and distributional consequences. The model is calibrated to British Columbian data to examine the implications of shutting down different industries by linking industries to occupations. We find that endogenous choice to self-isolate is key: it reduces the peak weekly infection rate by two percentage points but reduces the trough consumption level by four percentage points, even without policy mandated lockdowns. The model also produces widening consumption inequality, a fact that has characterized Covid-19.
2021
During the COVID-19 pandemic, evidence has accumulated that movement restrictions enacted to combat virus spread produce disparate consequences along socioeconomic lines. We investigate the hypothesis that people engaged in financially secure employment are better able to adhere to mobility restrictions, due to occupational factors that link the capacity for flexible work arrangements to income security. We use high-resolution spatial data on household internet traffic as a surrogate for adaptation to home-based work, together with the geographical clustering of occupation types, to investigate the relationship between occupational factors and increased internet traffic during work hours under lockdown in two Australian cities. By testing our hypothesis based on the observed trends, and exploring demographic factors associated with divergences from our hypothesis, we are left with a picture of unequal impact dominated by two major influences: the types of occupations in which people...
COVID-19 and the role of gender, earnings, and telecommuting in parents' employment
Journal of Marriage and Family , 2023
Objective: To understand how married mothers’ and fathers’ earnings and ability to telecommute structured their employment throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Background: We weigh two competing explanations— rational choice and gendered resources—to evaluate the association between married parents’ financial and workplace resources and sustained employment throughout the pandemic. Method: We use hierarchical logistic regression models to analyze rotating panel data from the current population survey for respondents in dual-earner, different-sex marriages who are aged 25 to 54 with children 12 years or younger from January 2020 through August 2021. We restrict our analysis to those who were employed prior to the start of the pandemic to isolate pandemic-related exits. Results: We find that being the primary earner (i.e., earning at least half of the household income) prior to the start of the pandemic did not protect mothers from employment exits during the pandemic. Fathers’ primary earner status did help sustain their employment. In contrast, access to telecommuting was an important resource to help sustain mothers’ work attachment throughout the pandemic but had little association with fathers’ employment. Conclusion: Rational choice explanations help explain married fathers’ but not mothers’ employment during the pandemic. Gendered resources better explain mothers’ employment. Mothers who were primary earners were still pulled away from employment as caregiving demands grew during the pandemic. Telecommuting supported mothers’ employment by offering flexibility in addressing these competing work and family demands, but not by challenging conventional gender divisions of labor among different-sex couples.