TY  - BOOK
AU  - Cajner,Tomaz
AU  - Crane,Leland D.
AU  - Decker,Ryan A.
AU  - Grigsby,John
AU  - Hamins-Puertolas,Adrian
AU  - Hurst,Erik
AU  - Kurz,Christopher
AU  - Yildirmaz,Ahu
ED  - National Bureau of Economic Research.
TI  - The U.S. Labor Market during the Beginning of the Pandemic Recession
T2  - NBER working paper series
PY  - 2020///
CY  - Cambridge, Mass.
PB  - National Bureau of Economic Research
N1  - May 2020; Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers
N2  - Using weekly administrative payroll data from the largest U.S. payroll processing company, we measure the evolution of the U.S. labor market during the first four months of the global COVID-19 pandemic. After aggregate employment fell by 21 percent through late-April, employment rebounded somewhat through late-June. The re-opening of temporarily shuttered businesses contributed significantly to the employment rebound, particularly for smaller businesses. We show that worker recall has been an important component of recent employment gains for both re-opening and continuing businesses. Employment losses have been concentrated disproportionately among lower wage workers; as of late June employment for workers in the lowest wage quintile was still 20 percent lower relative to mid-February levels. As a result, average base wages increased between February and June, though this increase arose entirely through a composition effect. Finally, we document that businesses have cut nominal wages for almost 7 million workers while forgoing regularly scheduled wage increases for many others
UR  - https://www.nber.org/papers/w27159
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w27159
ER  -