Labour Supply in the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Empirical Evidence on Hours, Home Office, and Expectations

Hans-Martin von Gaudecker, Radost Holler (), Lena Janys (), Bettina M. Siflinger () and Christian Zimpelmann
Additional contact information
Radost Holler: Bonn Graduate School of Economics
Lena Janys: Newcastle University
Bettina M. Siflinger: Tilburg University

No 13158, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Using a survey module administered in late March 2020, we analyze how working hours change under the social distancing regulations enacted to fight the CoViD-19 pandemic. We study the Netherlands, which are a prototypical Western European country, both in terms of its welfare system and its response to the pandemic. We show that total hours decline and more so for the self-employed and those with lower educational degrees. The education gradient appears because workers with a tertiary degree work a much higher number of hours from home. The strength of this effect is dampened by the government defining some workers to be essential for the working of the economy. Across sectors, we show that there are two clusters: One dominated by office-type occupations with high shares of academics, home-office hours, and low fractions of essential workers; and one where manual tasks and social interactions are prevalent with low shares of academics, home office hours, and often high shares of essential workers. Short-term expectations show that workers expect current patterns to prevail and that they expect a lot from government support schemes. In particular, many workers expect to keep their jobs in early June due to government support and the expected unemployment response is far lower than in the U.S. or the U.K..

Keywords: essential workers; working hours; home office; CoViD-19; expectations; education groups (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J22 J40 J65 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2020-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (38)

Published - revised version (IZA DP 14382) published as 'Hours and income dynamics during the Covid-19 pandemic: The case of the Netherlands' in: Labour Economics, 2021, 73, 102055

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp13158.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Labour supply in the early stages of the CoViD-19 Pandemic: Empirical Evidence on hours, home office, and expectations (2020)
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:iza:izadps:dp13158

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().