revised version (IZA DP 14382) published as 'Hours and income dynamics during the Covid-19 pandemic: The case of the Netherlands' in: Labour Economics, 2021, 102055
Using a survey module administered in late March 2020, we analyze how working
hours change under the social distancing regulations enacted to fight the CoViD-19
pandemic. We study the Netherlands, which are a prototypical Western European
country, both in terms of its welfare system and its response to the pandemic. We
show that total hours decline and more so for the self-employed and those with
lower educational degrees. The education gradient appears because workers with a
tertiary degree work a much higher number of hours from home. The strength of this
effect is dampened by the government defining some workers to be essential for the
working of the economy. Across sectors, we show that there are two clusters: One
dominated by office-type occupations with high shares of academics, home-office
hours, and low fractions of essential workers; and one where manual tasks and social
interactions are prevalent with low shares of academics, home office hours, and often
high shares of essential workers. Short-term expectations show that workers expect
current patterns to prevail and that they expect a lot from government support
schemes. In particular, many workers expect to keep their jobs in early June due to
government support and the expected unemployment response is far lower than in
the U.S. or the U.K..
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