LabRec - Labor Demand in Crisis and Recovery

The project consists of three work packages: In the first work package, we start out by tracking changes in job vacancy postings, hires, separations and job growth following the outbreak of COVID 19. We compare the trajectories from 2020, to pre-crisis observations from the same months from 2018 and 2019, by occupations, industries, and regions. These analyses will be in "real-time" drawing monthly data at half- or yearly intervals from the fall of 2020. We follow both online job vacancy postings, hires, separations and job growth. The focus in the initial phase will be to study the development of occupations, industries, and regions that are most likely to be affected by the political measures and behavioral responses by individuals and firms, with characteristics such as direct human contact, travel and transport dependency, conditions for home- and teleworking etc. In the next phase it will be important to identify spillover effects to other industries and occupations, and the responses to new challenges in the aftermath of the pandemic, such as likely drops in domestic and international demands, broken international value chains, a decline in oil prices, a possible financial crisis, that again are likely to change the trajectories of labor demand. In the second work package, we add data on labor productivity of firms, and analyse how the crisis impacts productivity growth, job reallocation, inequality, and polarization in the labor market. We depart from underlying trends in productivity and changes in relative demand for different types of labor, and study the extent to which these trends are magnified or ameliorated during the different phases of the downturn. The third work package is comparative. We use nearly real-time data on job postings in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the US, coupled with nearly real-time data on new hires, new separations and net job growth, we will map labor demand from January 2020, into the crisis and onward.