Events

[Joint work with Berkay Özcan, and Magdalena Rossetti-Youlton]

We analyze the impact economic crisis on household joblessness across labor markets, using the example of the COVID19 pandemic in the metropolitan areas in the United States. We use quarterly data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) 2016-2021 for a shift-share decomposition of the change in household joblessness in metropolitan areas. Investigating whether job loss is absorbed by or accumulated in households, we break down joblessness variations to changes in individual joblessness, household compositions, and polarization, i.e., the unequal distribution of jobs across households. We find that household joblessness increased in US metropolitan areas. This is largely due to the large number of individuals losing their jobs but with the economic recovery and falling individual joblessness numbers emerges an increasing polarization in household joblessness that indicates longer lasting disparities. To explain the variance in pandemic-induced increases in polarization, we focus on the labor market make up of metropolitan areas as reflected in the educational profile of the population. We measure three distinct features: education level, educational heterogeneity, and the degree of educational homogamy. We find that the variation in metropolitan areas in these measures before the pandemic shape the differential evolution polarization throughout the pandemic. Areas with higher educational heterogeneity and higher shares of educational homogamy tend to show higher increases in household joblessness and polarization.

The Sociology Seminar Series for Hilary Term is convened by Ginevra Floridi, Ramina Sotoudeh and Benjamin Elbers.  For more information about this or any of the seminars in the series, please contact sociology.secretary@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.