The Labor Market Impact of Covid-19 on Asian Americans

Chris de Mena (), Suvy Qin () and Jing Zhang
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Chris de Mena: https://economics.ucdavis.edu/people/chris-demena
Suvy Qin: https://are.berkeley.edu/user/13980

No WP 2023-10, Working Paper Series from Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Abstract: Asian Americans faced a disproportionately larger surge in unemployment rates than other racial and ethnic groups during the Covid-19 pandemic. While existing literature typically examines labor demand channels to explain this, we instead explore a labor supply channel. Our hypothesis is that Asian Americans are more cautious about Covid-19 infections and thus more selective about job opportunities, contributing to their higher unemployment rate than other groups. Analysis of cellphone data during the pandemic indicates that non-work mobility significantly decreased in areas with larger Asian populations, supporting our hypothesis.

JEL-codes: I0 J2 J7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22
Date: 2023-03-08
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