COVID-19: Jobs, Mental Health and Social Policies

In this project, a research team at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (wiiw.ac.at) is investigating important structural and distributional social impacts of the COVID -19 pandemic. In addition to the impact of the crisis on different economic sectors and on their organisation, the topics of employment and re-employment as well as the perspectives of different social groups are taken into account. For this purpose, a model is developed that captures the main features of the social and structural impacts in the medium and long term (`agent-based stock-flow consistent model`). Besides factors of labour market economics, it also includes changes in technology, productivity and work organisation as well as economic policy decisions. Four empirical studies shed light on important components of the theoretical model. These include structural developments of economic activities, different employment models, homeworking and effects on mental health, analysis of government measures. Michael A. Landesmann, Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies

The aim of this project was to undertake innovative research on the impact of the Covid-19 crisis in a number of different areas: structure of the economy, employment, work organisation, the impact on different groups of society (by age, gender, education) including on the health situation of these groups; it also examined policy reactions to the crisis. One component of the project was to develop a specially specified 'stock-flow consistent agent-based model' to capture the Covid-19 crisis (lock-downs and subsequent recovery) and its structural impact on sectoral composition, market structures, longer-term potential output, work organisation and wealth and income distribution, plus the impact of policy reactions to these developments (short-term employment support, business loan supports, fiscal policy). The other components covered various empirical investigations: a first study examined fiscal policy reactions to the Covid-19 crisis across the 27 EU economies (plus UK) and compared these to the fiscal policy responses to the financial and Euro crises over the years 2008-2014. A second study focussed more specifically on the different components of government spending for social protection and to which extent these contributed to stabilisation during the pandemic. A third study examined disparities in the dynamics and patterns of job loss at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria, then estimated the average duration of unemployment across various key socio-demographic groups and identified their paths out of unemployment. It also compared the patterns of unemployment exit and subsequent employment stability of individuals who lost their jobs early in the pandemic with those of longer-term unemployed. A fourth study used high-frequency online job-posting data for Austria and applied an event study approach to analyse changes in the speed of labour demand for new hires in response to the lockdowns that were repeatedly put in place to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. It tested whether the uncertainty-reducing effect of similar lockdowns occurring in quick succession increased the responsiveness of the labour market, thereby allowing for more rapid adjustment. It finds that responses to the various events differed significantly by occupation and industry. A fifth study analysed the relationship between working from home (WFH) and mental well-being at different stages during the first two critical years of the COVID-19 pandemic across the 27 EU member states, when governments repeatedly imposed lockdowns and enacted WFH mandates to contain the spread of the virus. It examined the potentially changing roles of several mediators over time affecting the relationship between WFH and mental health, such as work-family conflict, family-work conflict, stability, resilience, isolation, the importance of different support networks, workload, physical risk of contracting COVID-19 at work, and housing conditions. It also focussed on the different behavioural patterns of women and men.