Local resistance to rising unemployment in the context of the COVID‐19 mitigation policies across Great Britain

Abstract

Policies to arrest the rapid spread of the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in whole sectors of the economy and social life being either entirely locked down or severely curtailed in the Spring of 2020. This paper uses a resilience framework to analyse two aspects of ability to resist rising unemployment at local level across Great Britain during the early part of the Covid-19 pandemic when full 'lockdown' measures were in place: (i) level of pre-lockdown unemployment; and (ii) share of employment in sectors most affected by the lockdown. Findings reveal that pre-lockdown unemployment is a stronger predictor than sector mix of the rise in unemployment in the first month of the lockdown. This finding underlines the importance of spatially rebalancing the UK economy, including strong local and regional economic development policies, in order to build resilience to future recessionary shocks.

Regional differences in the epidemic shock on the local labor market and its spread

“…The estimated coefficient for the unemployment rate in 2015 is negative and insignificant, as shown in Column (4) of Table 3. A previous study (Houston, 2020) suggests that the unemployment level before the pandemic affects the number of unemployed during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find a similar result that low economic conditions have permanency.…”

“…Unempl r is the unemployment ratio in the areas where the public employment security office, r, is located in the latest data, 2015. Houston (2020) found that the unemployment ratio before the pandemic affected the unemployment numbers after the pandemic in Great Britain. This study examines whether the local labor market conditions before the pandemic affect the number of job postings after the pandemic.…”

“…Our study analyzes the impact of the shock of the epidemic from the perspective of geographic differences. Houston (2020) analyzes the rising unemployment at the local level using data from Great Britain. The author finds that the pre-lockdown unemployment effects are stronger than the share of employment in the sectors most affected by the lockdown and that high skills in the workforce decrease the increase in unemployment.…”

Cultural and economic discrimination by the Great Leveller

“…That is why identifying where this inequality escalation of social tension might start is of paramount importance. Houston (2020) presents evidence on the relationship between past levels of unemployment across regions and the experienced unemployment dynamics during the COVID-19 shock. He demonstrates that the labour market resilience of a place is dependent on its conditions from pre-pandemic times.…”

Testing the Differential Impact of COVID-19 on Self-Employed Women and Men in the United Kingdom

“…Information can be linked to the COVID-19 study from the USoc which allows us to compile a study sample enriched with pre-crisis information. This is important as crisis impacts are conditioned by pre-crisis factors (Cowling et al, 2015;Houston, 2020).…”