Labor market effects of COVID-19 in Sweden and its neighbors: Evidence from administrative data.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Juranek S
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8661996 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:We investigate the short-term effects of COVID-19 on labor market flows and how they are mediated by labor market policy. Using Italian administrative data on a sample of active contracts between 2009 and the second quarter of 2020, we show that, before the pandemic, a higher share of female compared to male, young compared to old and low educated compared to high educated workers is employed in non-essential activities. When we look at the change in hirings and separations, from the 9th week of 2020 - the time when first cases and deaths due to COVID-19 were recorded -, we find a pronounced drop in hirings and endings of fixed-term contracts. Layoffs and quits increase after the 9th week, and then decline significantly, reflecting the effects of government intervention. The lifting of the lockdown triggers a slow recovery of labor market flows. Young workers, those on temporary contracts, low-educated workers, those employed in the South and those with no opportunities of working from home experience a greater decline in separation probability, indicating that government policy partly protected them from the labor market impact of the recession. The decline in the separation probability for women is lower than that for men.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10888-021-09522-610.1007/s10888-021-09522-6.
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Project description:Abstract Despite the growing importance of migrants and their role in the South Korean economy, how much and in which ways COVID‐19, as an adverse labor market shock, has affected them has received too little attention, with no single study published to date yet. Motivated by such a paucity, this paper investigates the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic crisis on employment for migrants in South Korea, with special emphasis on quantifying the magnitude of its causal effect. In doing so, this study exploits the unique fact that only one specific region in South Korea had a substantial number of COVID‐19 infections in the early stage of the pandemic so that estimations can be made using a difference‐in‐differences (DD) model. The DD estimates suggest that COVID‐19 lowered migrants’ overall employment probability by 2.5 to 3.2 percent points. However, strong heterogeneity between the genders is apparent: the pandemic severely hurts female migrants’ employment, with male migrants weathering it relatively unscathed. Furthermore, female migrants seem considerably harder hit than female host populations. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that (i) a duration of stay exceeding 5 years and (ii) fluency in Korean (as a local language) protect migrants from being heavily affected by the COVID‐driven employment shock.
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Project description:The speed of the economic downturn in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic has been exceptional, causing mass layoffs-in Germany up to 30% of the workforce in some industries. Economic rationale suggests that the decision on which workers are fired should depend on productivity-related individual factors. However, from hiring situations we know that discrimination-i.e., decisions driven by characteristics unrelated to productivity-is widespread in Western labor markets. Drawing on representative survey data on forced layoffs and short-time work collected in Germany between April and December 2020, this study highlights that discrimination against immigrants is also present in firing situations. The analysis shows that employees with a migration background are significantly more likely to lose their job than native workers when otherwise healthy firms are unexpectedly forced to let go of part of their workforce, while firms make more efforts to substitute firing with short-time working schemes for their native workers. Adjusting for detailed job-related characteristics shows that the findings are unlikely to be driven by systematic differences in productivity between migrants and natives. Moreover, using industry-specific variation in the extent of the economic downturn, I demonstrate that layoff probabilities hardly differ across the less affected industries, but that the gap between migrants and natives increases with the magnitude of the shock. In the hardest-hit industries, job loss probability among migrants is three times higher than among natives. This confirms the hypothesis that firing discrimination puts additional pressure on the immigrant workforce in times of crisis.
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Project description:BackgroundThe present study examined the independent and combined effects of childhood adversity (CA) and occupational class on the risk of future labor market marginalization (LMM) in young employees in Sweden. Occupational class (non-manual/manual workers) was also explored as a potential mediator.MethodsThis population-based longitudinal cohort study included 556 793 employees, 19-29 years, residing in Sweden in 2009. CAs included parental death, parental mental and somatic disorders, parental separation, household public assistance, single-parent household and residential instability. Measures of LMM included long-term unemployment (LTU), long-term sickness absence (LTSA) and disability pension. Estimates of risk of each LMM measure, between 2010 and 2016 were calculated as hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs), using a Cox regression analysis.ResultsThose exposed to CA had an elevated risk for all measures of LMM. Manual workers with a history of household public assistance had the highest risk estimates compared to non-manual workers with no CAs [adjusted HR spanning from 1.59 (LTSA) to 2.50 (LTU)]. Regardless of occupational class, the risk of LMM grew higher with increasing number of CAs (e.g. adjusted HR of LMM in manual workers with 3+ CAs: 1.87, 95% CI: 1.81-1.94). These patterns persisted after adjustments for a range of confounders, including psychiatric and somatic morbidity. Last, we found a small but significant mediating effect of occupational class in the association between CA and LMM.ConclusionsInformation on CAs are important determinants of LMM in young adults, and especially in manual workers.
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