Download This PaperLabour Supply in the Early Stages of the Covid-19 Pandemic: Empirical Evidence on Hours, Home Office, and Expectations
25 Pages Posted: 20 Apr 2020 Last revised: 6 May 2025
Abstract
Using a survey module administered in late March 2020, we analyze how workinghours change under the social distancing regulations enacted to fight the CoViD-19pandemic. We study the Netherlands, which are a prototypical Western Europeancountry, both in terms of its welfare system and its response to the pandemic. Weshow that total hours decline and more so for the self-employed and those withlower educational degrees. The education gradient appears because workers with atertiary degree work a much higher number of hours from home. The strength of thiseffect is dampened by the government defining some workers to be essential for theworking of the economy. Across sectors, we show that there are two clusters: Onedominated by office-type occupations with high shares of academics, home-officehours, and low fractions of essential workers; and one where manual tasks and socialinteractions are prevalent with low shares of academics, home office hours, and oftenhigh shares of essential workers. Short-term expectations show that workers expectcurrent patterns to prevail and that they expect a lot from government supportschemes. In particular, many workers expect to keep their jobs in early June due togovernment support and the expected unemployment response is far lower than inthe U.S. or the U.K..
Keywords: essential workers, working hours, home office, CoViD-19, expectations, education groups
JEL Classification: J22, J65, J40
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation