Home Production and Leisure During the COVID-19 Recession

Oksana Leukhina and Zhixiu Yu

No 2020-025, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Abstract: Between the months of February and April of 2020, average weekly market hours dropped by 6.25, meanwhile 35% of commuting workers reported switching to remote work arrangements. In this paper, we examine implications of these changes for the time allocation of different households, and on aggregate. We estimate that home production activity increased by 2.1 hours a week, or 34% of lost market hours, whereas leisure activity increased by 3.8 hours a week. The monthly value of home production increased by $30.83 billion – that is 10.5% of the concurrent $292.61 billion drop in monthly GDP. Although market hours declined the most for single, less educated individuals, the lost market hours were absorbed into home production the most by married individuals with children.

Keywords: Shutdown; pandemic; remote work; home production; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 E32 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2020-08-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac
Note: Publisher DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/bejm-2020-0271
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published in The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics

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Related works:
Journal Article: Home Production and Leisure during the COVID-19 Recession (2022)
Working Paper: Home Production and Leisure During the COVID-19 Recession (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedlwp:88542

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DOI: 10.20955/wp.2020.025

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