Social Gradients in Employment during and after the COVID-19 Pandemic

Annette Alstadsæter, Bernt Bratsberg (), Simen Markussen, Oddbjørn Raaum and Knut Røed ()
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Bernt Bratsberg: Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research

No 16260, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We examine employment effects of the COVID-19 crisis in Norway during the initial lockdown, through the subsequent recovery, and after the dust had settled. While we identify large and socially skewed effects of the crisis through its early phases, we find no long-term effects on employees exposed to early risk of job loss. For those employed at the onset of the pandemic, both the level and the socioeconomic composition of employment quickly returned to normal. In contrast, we find considerable negative long-term employment effects on people who were non-employed when the crisis hit. We argue that these patterns can be explained by social insurance policies that gave priority to protecting existing jobs and to distribute benefits to those who were temporarily laid off. Given the extreme increase in the social insurance caseload, an almost unavoidable side-effect was reduced capacity for providing services to the already non-employed.

Keywords: social gradient; employment; COVID-19; labor demand shock (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 J11 J2 J4 J6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2023-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
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Published - revised version published online in: Journal of Economic Inequality , 17 September 2024

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