The U.S. Labor Market during the Beginning of the Pandemic Recession

Abstract

We thank Sinem Buber, Mita Goldar and Matthew Levin from ADP for their support on the project. We also thank Steve Davis, Jan Eberly and Jonathan Parker for comments on prior drafts. As part of the University of Chicago data use contract, ADP reviewed the paper prior to distribution with the sole focus of making sure that the paper did not release information that would compromise the privacy of their clients or reveal proprietary information about the ADP business model. The views expressed in the paper are the authors' and do not necessarily reflect the views of ADP or the National Bureau of Economic Research. Additionally, the analysis and conclusions set forth here are those of the authors and do not indicate concurrence by other members of the research staff or the Board of Governors. At least one co-author has disclosed a financial relationship of potential relevance for this research. Further information is available online at http://www.nber.org/papers/w27159.ack NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

The Economic Impacts of COVID-19: Evidence from a New Public Database Built Using Private Sector Data

“…The fact that spending fell in proportion to the degree of physical exposure required across sectors suggests that the reduction in spending by the rich was driven primarily by health concerns rather than a reduction in income or wealth. Indeed, the incomes of the rich have fallen relatively little in this recession (Cajner et al 2020). Consistent with the centrality of health concerns, we find that the reductions in spending and time spent outside home were larger in high-income, highdensity areas with higher rates of COVID infection, perhaps because high-income individuals can self-isolate more easily (e.g., by substituting to remote work).…”

Working Remotely and the Supply-side Impact of Covid-19

“…1 Recent work examines the response of employment (Coibion, Gorodnichenko, and Weber, 2020b;Cajner, Crane, Decker, Grigsby, Hamins-Puertolas, Hurst, Kurz, and Yildirmaz, 2020;Campello, Kankanhalli, and Muthukrishnan, 2020;Borjas and Cassidy, 2020;Fairlie, Couch, and Xu, 2020); firm revenue (Barrero, Bloom, and Davis, 2020;Landier and Thesmar, 2020); firm closures (Bartik, Bertrand, Cullen, Glaeser, Luca, and Stanton, 2020); stock market performance (Ding, Levine, Lin, and Xie, 2020); or consumer spending Baker, Farrokhnia, Meyer, Pagel, and Yannelis (2020); Coibion, Gorodnichenko, and Weber (2020a) during this period.…”

Trading Off Consumption and COVID-19 Deaths

“…Early evidence suggests that lower earners have been hit harder by social distancing in the U.S. Cajner et al (2020) is one such study. Following Jones and Klenow (2016), one could quantify the loss in welfare from rising consumption inequality.…”