Labor Markets during the COVID-19 Crisis: A Preliminary View

Olivier Coibion, Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Michael Weber

No 13139, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We use a repeated large-scale survey of households in the Nielsen Homescan panel to characterize how labor markets are being affected by the covid-19 pandemic. We document several facts. First, job loss has been significantly larger than implied by new unemployment claims: we estimate 20 million lost jobs by April 8th, far more than jobs lost over the entire Great Recession. Second, many of those losing jobs are not actively looking to find new ones. As a result, we estimate the rise in the unemployment rate over the corresponding period to be surprisingly small, only about 2 percentage points. Third, participation in the labor force has declined by 7 percentage points, an unparalleled fall that dwarfs the three percentage point cumulative decline that occurred from 2008 to 2016. Early retirement almost fully explains the drop in labor force participation both for those survey participants previously employed and those previously looking for work.

Keywords: labor market; unemployment; employment; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C83 D84 E31 J21 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 2020-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (291)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp13139.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Labor Markets During the COVID-19 Crisis: A Preliminary View (2020)
Working Paper: Labor Markets During the COVID-19 Crisis: A Preliminary View (2020)
Working Paper: Labor Markets During the Covid-19 Crisis: A Preliminary View (2020)
Working Paper: Labor Markets During the Covid-19 Crisis: A Preliminary View (2020)
Working Paper: Labor Markets during the Covid-19 Crisis: A Preliminary View (2020)
Working Paper: Labor Markets During the COVID-19 Crisis: A Preliminary View (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13139

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().