Remote Work and the Heterogeneous Impact of COVID-19 on Employment and Health / Manuela Angelucci, Marco Angrisani, Daniel M. Bennett, Arie Kapteyn, Simone G. Schaner.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Angelucci, Manuela.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Angrisani, Marco.

Bennett, Daniel M.

Kapteyn, Arie.

Schaner, Simone G.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w27749.

NBER working paper series no. w27749

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2020.

Summary:

This paper examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on employment and respiratory health for remote workers (i.e. those who can work from home) and non-remote workers in the United States. Using a large, nationally-representative, high-frequency panel dataset from March through July of 2020, we show that job losses were up to three times as large for non-remote workers. This gap is larger than the differential job losses for women, African Americans, Hispanics, or workers without college degrees. Non-remote workers also experienced relatively worse respiratory health, which likely occurred because it was more difficult for non-remote workers to protect themselves. Grouping workers by pre-pandemic household income shows that job losses and, to a lesser extent, health losses were highest among non-remote workers from low-income households, exacerbating existing disparities. Finally, we show that lifting non-essential business closures did not substantially increase employment.

Notes:

Print version record

August 2020.