The effect of Covid-19 on labor market flows by occupation and gender

For the US and Canada, we compare the Covid-19 effect on gender in terms of labour flows including movements in and out of employment, unemployment and non-participation as well as the allocations across occupations. In particular, we categorize occupations into categories that are likely to have been affected differently by COVID19. For example, we classify occupations into those that are people-intensive and not, essential and not, and those that can likely work from home and those that cannot. We examine the allocations across occupations and aggregate changes across labor market states before, during and after the pandemic in our study. We also compare the pandemic patterns to those from the same months one year earlier to control for seasonal effects. For the US data, and at a later date for the Canadian data, we will also link respondent files across four adjacent months and examine individual level flows across labor market states by occupation types and gender. This will allow us to examine the likelihood of workers who are displaced by COVID19 of returning to employment in their previous occupation or in a different type of occupation depending on the characteristics of their previous occupation and their gender.