Has the Willingness to Work Fallen during the Covid Pandemic?

Jason Faberman (), Andreas Mueller and Aysegul Sahin

No 17043, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We examine the effect of the Covid pandemic on willingness to work along both the extensive and intensive margins of labor supply. Special survey questions in the Job Search Supplement of the Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE) allow us to elicit information about individuals’ desired work hours for the 2013-2021 period. Using these questions, along with workers’ actual labor market participation, we construct a labor market underutilization measure, the Aggregate Hours Gap (AHG), following Faberman et al. (2020). The AHG captures changes in labor market underutilization for the full population along both the extensive and intensive margins using data on desired work hours as a measure of their potential labor supply. We find that the sharp increase in the AHG during the Covid pandemic essentially disappeared by the end of 2021. We also document a sharp decline in desired work hours during the pandemic that persists through the end of 2021 and is roughly double the drop in the labor force participation rate. Ignoring the decline in desired hours overstates the degree of underutilization by 2.5 percentage points (12.5%). Our findings suggest that, as of 2021Q4, the labor market is tighter than suggested by the unemployment rate and the adverse labor supply effect of the pandemic is more pronounced than implied by the labor force participation rate. These discrepancies underscore the importance of taking into account the intensive margin for both labor market underutilization and potential labor supply.

Keywords: Labor market slack; Covid pandemic; Desired work hours; Potential labor supply (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 J21 J60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-02
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP17043 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Has the Willingness to Work Fallen during the Covid Pandemic? (2022)
Working Paper: Has the Willingness to Work Fallen during the COVID Pandemic? (2022)
Working Paper: Has the Willingness to Work Fallen during the Covid Pandemic? (2022)
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:cpr:ceprdp:17043

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP17043

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().