Working Paper: NBER ID: w28240
Authors: Joshua D. Gottlieb; Avi Zenilman
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.
Keywords: No keywords provided
JEL Codes: I11; J22; J30; J41; J61; R20
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Demand shocks (measured by COVID-19 case counts) (E39) | supply of traveling nurses (J20) |
| Increase in demand for traveling nurses (J23) | increase in number of traveling nurse jobs (J69) |
| Increase in number of traveling nurse jobs (J23) | compensation changes (M52) |
| compensation changes (M52) | elasticity of labor supply (J22) |
| Controlling for state and calendar day fixed effects (C23) | elasticity of labor supply increases (J20) |
| Willingness to travel longer distances for higher pay (J62) | integrated national market facilitates worker reallocation (F16) |
| Simultaneous demand shocks across the country (E39) | need for increase in total workforce (J21) |