When Workers Travel: Nursing Supply During Covid-19 Surges

38 Pages Posted: 21 Dec 2020 Last revised: 30 Aug 2024

See all articles by Joshua D. Gottlieb

Joshua D. Gottlieb

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); University of Chicago

Avi Zenilman

Yale University

Date Written: December 2020

Abstract

We study how short-term labor markets responded to an extraordinary demand shock during the COVID-19 pandemic. We use traveling nurse jobs - a market hospitals use to fill temporary staffing needs - to examine workers' willingness to move to places with larger demand shocks. We find a dramatic increase in market size during the pandemic, especially for those specialties central to COVID-19 care. The number of jobs increased far more than compensation, suggesting that labor supply to this fringe of the nursing market is quite elastic. To examine workers' willingness to move across different locations, we examine jobs in different locations on the same day, and find an even more elastic supply response. We show that part of this supply responsiveness comes from workers' willingness to travel longer distances for jobs when payment increases, suggesting that an integrated national market facilitates reallocating workers when demand surges. This implies that a simultaneous national demand spike might be harder for the market to accommodate rapidly.

Suggested Citation

Gottlieb, Joshua D. and Gottlieb, Joshua D. and Zenilman, Avi, When Workers Travel: Nursing Supply During Covid-19 Surges (December 2020). NBER Working Paper No. w28240, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3753150

Joshua D. Gottlieb (Contact Author)

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

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Cambridge, MA 02138
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HOME PAGE: http://papers.nber.org/authors/joshua_gottlieb

University of Chicago ( email )

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HOME PAGE: http://www.gottlieb.ca/

Avi Zenilman

Yale University

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