Full Citation

Title: Effects of the COVID-19 Recession on the US Labor Market: Occupation, Family, and Gender

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2021

ISBN:

ISSN:

DOI: 10.1257/jep.35.3.3

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Abstract: Recessions in the United States are usually associated with a larger employment drop for men than for women. But during the COVID-19 recession, employment losses were larger for women. Figure 1 shows the employment-to-population ratio for men and women during the last four business cycles. The drop in the ratio was higher for men than for women in each previous cycle, but not in the pandemic recession. There are demand-side and supply-side reasons why the pattern of employment changes during recessions is different for men and women, and these patterns have not been the same during the pandemic as in previous recessions. On the demand side, the asymmetry is partly explained by gender differences in the occupation distribution, with men primarily employed in production occupations and women concentrated in service occupations, which tend to be less cyclical (Albanesi and Sahin 2018; Olsson 2019). During the pandemic, however, there has been a sizable drop in the demand for services as a result of both the mitigation measures enacted to contain the pandemic and consumers' response to the risk of infection (Chetty et al. 2020). Given the concentration of women in service occupations, they have been disproportionately hit by the corresponding employment losses. On the supply side, married women have, in the past, tended to increase their attachment to the labor force during economic downturns relative to expansions as a form of household insurance that reduces the impact of recessions (Ellieroth 2019). Before the pandemic, the lower cyclicality of women’s employment led to a reduction in the cyclical volatility of aggregate employment as the share of women in the workforce increased from the 1970s onward (Albanesi 2019). During the pandemic, limited availability of in-person childcare and schooling options led many parents—and women in particular—to exit the labor force.

Url: https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.35.3.3

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Authors: Albanesi, Stefania; Kim, Jiyeon

Periodical (Full): Journal of Economic Perspectives

Issue: 3

Volume: 35

Pages: 3-24

Data Collections: IPUMS CPS

Topics: Gender, Health, Labor Force and Occupational Structure

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