Effects of the COVID-19 Recession on the US Labor Market: Occupation, Family, and Gender

By Stefania Albanesi, Jiyeon Kim. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2021

223 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The economic crisis associated with the emergence of the novel corona virus is unlike standard recessions. Demand for workers in high contact and inflexible service occupations has declined while parental supply of labor has been reduced by lack of access to reliable child care and in-person schooling options. This has led to a substantial and persistent drop in employment and labor force participation for women, who are typically less affected by recessions than men. We examine real-time data on employment, unemployment, labor force participation and gross job flows to document the impact of the pandemic by occupation, gender and family status. We also discuss the potential long-term implications of this crisis, including the role of automation in depressing the recovery of employment for the worst hit service occupations.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, General Health Professions, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/19a3feb60975bde4e02350e42764723fec98fc63

Citations in the corpus

• Heterogeneous Labor Market Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic (2020, unknown): “Alon et al. (2021), Bluedorn et al. (2021), and Albanesi and Kim (2021) examined the gender dimension of the pandemic, while Montenovo et al. (2020) and Couch, Fairlie, and Xu (2020) also used CPS data to explore the heterogeneous employment impacts of the pandemic across demographic groups.”