Tracking Labor Market Developments during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Preliminary Assessment

Tomaz Cajner, Leland Crane, Ryan Decker, Adrian Hamins-Puertolas and Christopher J. Kurz
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Christopher J. Kurz: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/christopher-j-kurz.htm

No 2020-030, Finance and Economics Discussion Series from Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.)

Abstract: Many traditional official statistics are not suitable for measuring high-frequency developments that evolve over the course of weeks, not months. In this paper, we track the labor market effects of the COVID-19 pandemic with weekly payroll employment series based on microdata from ADP. These data are available essentially in real-time, and allow us to track both aggregate and industry effects. Cumulative losses in paid employment through April 4 are currently estimated at 18 million; just during the two weeks between March 14 and March 28 the U.S. economy lost about 13 million paid jobs. For comparison, during the entire Great Recession less than 9 million private payroll employment jobs were lost. In the current crisis, the most affected sector is leisure and hospitality, which has so far lost or furloughed about 30 percent of employment, or roughly 4 million jobs.

Keywords: Labor market; Economic measurement; Big data; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C53 C55 C81 J11 J20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 p.
Date: 2020-04-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2020-30

DOI: 10.17016/FEDS.2020.030

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