US Wage Patterns During and After the Pandemic: Insights from a Novel Data Source

Abstract

This paper adds to a growing body of evidence on the underlying determinants of pandemic and postpandemic wage patterns by leveraging private-sector payroll records from ADP Inc., a dataset that comprises more than 25 million employees, or about 1 in 6 workers in the United States. The paper finds that the pandemic's disruption of industry sectors and workers drove large swings in pay growth as lower-wage workers left the labor force in the spring of 2020 and were hired back a year later. It also triggered a shift to larger year-over-year pay gains that so far have endured, albeit with some moderation.

Keywords: Wage Patterns, Labor Force, Employment, Labor Demand, Labor Supply

JEL Classification: J2, J3, J63, J64