COVID-19, Stay-at-Home Orders and Employment: Evidence from CPS Data*

Louis-Philippe Beland, Abel Brodeur and Taylor Wright

No 20-04, Carleton Economic Papers from Carleton University, Department of Economics

Abstract: In this paper, we examine the short-term consequesnces of COVID-19 and evaluate the impacts of stay-at-home orders on employment and wages in the United States. Guided by a pre-analysis plan, we document that COVID-19 increased the unemployment rate, decreased hours of work and labor force participation, especially for younger workers, non-white, not married and less-educated workers. We built four indexes (exposure to disease, proximity to coworkers, work remotely and critical workers) to study the impact of COVID-19. We find that workers that can work remotely are significantly less likely to have their labor market outcomes affected, while workers working in proximity to coworkers are more affected. The unemployment effects are significantly larger for states that implementsed stay-at-home orders. Our estimates suggest that, as of early May, these policies increased unemployment by nearly 4 percentage points, but reduced COVID-19 cases by 186,600-311,00, and deaths by 17,851-23,325. We apply our estimates to compute lost income ($18.6-$21.4 billion), reduced government income tax revenues ($3.4-$5.5 billion), increased unemployment insurance benefit payments ($5-$5.8 billion) and reduced hospital costs ($0.7-$1.2 billion). Despite the jobs lost, age adjusted value of statistical life suggests that stay-at-home orders are cost effective.

Keywords: COVID-19; unemployment; wages; remote work; exposure to disease; essential workers; stay-at-home orders; lockdown (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I15 I18 J21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 110 pages
Date: 2020-04-16, Revised 2020-05-19
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (54)

Published: Carleton Economics Papers

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https://www.carleton.ca/economics/wp-content/uploads/cewp20-04.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: COVID-19, Stay-At-Home Orders and Employment: Evidence from CPS Data (2020)
Working Paper: COVID-19, Stay-at-Home Orders and Employment: Evidence from CPS Data (2020)
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