COVID-19 Is Not Affecting All Working People Equally

Carsten Schröder, Theresa Entringer, Jan Goebel, Markus Grabka, Daniel Graeber, Martin Kroh, Hannes Kröger, Simon Kühne, Stefan Liebig, Jürgen Schupp, Johannes Seebauer and Sabine Zinn

No 1083, SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Abstract: The corona pandemic and the political measures undertaken to contain it are changing the working conditions of many people in Germany. Based on data from the first tranche of a supplementary survey (SOEP-Cov) to the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), this study analyzes the effects of the corona crisis on Germany’s working population in 2019. In this paper, we investigate how severely people have been affected by the pandemic in three dimensions: individual level of education, gross individual earned income in 2019, and equivalent net household income in 2019. The key findings are that just under 20 percent of the working population are working reduced hours (on “short-time work”), and a good third are working partially or completely from home. Reported working hours have fallen by an average of four hours per week compared to the previous year. The extent to which working people have been affected by the corona crisis differs across the three dimensions. It is primarily those with higher incomes and a higher level of education who are using the opportunity to work from home, whereas those with a lower level of education are more likely to be on short-time work. Although most employees are not concerned about their own financial situation, they are concerned about the overall development of the German economy as of spring 2020.

Keywords: SOEP-CoV; corona; labor market; concerns (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D19 D39 I39 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 p.
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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