Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP17067
Authors: Carlos Carrillo-Tudela; Camila Comunello; Alex Clymo; Annette Jaeckle; Ludo Visschers; David Zentler-Munro
Abstract: The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the UK labour market has been extremely heterogeneous across occupation and industrial sectors. Using novel data on job search, we document how individuals adjust their job search behaviour in response to changing employment patterns across occupations and industries in the UK. We observe that workers changed their search direction in favour of expanding occupations and industries as the pandemic developed. This suggests job searchers do respond to occupation-wide and industry-wide conditions in addition to idiosyncratic career concerns. However, non-employed workers and those with low education levels are more attached to their previous occupations and more likely to target declining ones. We also see workers from declining occupations making fewer transitions to expanding occupations than those who start in such occupations, despite targeting these jobs relatively frequently. This suggests those at the margins of the labour market may be least able to escape occupations that declined during the pandemic.
Keywords: job search; occupation mobility; industry mobility; COVID-19 pandemic
JEL Codes: E24; J23; J63
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Pandemic-related employment changes (J63) | job search behaviour (J68) |
| Non-employed workers (J69) | targeting declining occupations (J68) |
| Lower education levels (I24) | targeting declining occupations (J68) |
| Workers from declining occupations (J69) | fewer transitions to expanding occupations (J69) |
| Net mobility from declining to expanding industries (J62) | increased during the pandemic (F69) |