Individual labour market transitions of Australians during and after the National COVID-19 Lockdown

ABSTRACT

We examine the individual labour market transitions of Australians during and after the National COVID-19 Lockdown, controlling for demographic characteristics and person fixed effects across different subgroups of the population using the Longitudinal Labour Force Survey. The National COVID-19 Lockdown (which began on 21 March 2020 with the introduction of social distancing rules and the closure of non-essential services across individual states and territories and lasted until the end of June 2020) decreased the overall labour force participation by 3% and increased unemployment by 1.8%. However, the economy recovered to a certain extent after the lockdown, with labour force participation increasing by 0.051% and unemployment declining by 0.049% for each additional week after the end of the lockdown. Our conditional estimates show that the national lockdown did not affect the genders differently in terms of unemployment, while females recovered faster during the post-lockdown period. People working in transport, postal, administrative, and arts and recreation services decreased their working hours significantly during the lockdown relative to those employed in other industries, but we do not observe any significant difference in their post-lockdown recovery patterns. Our results could help policy makers better target the labour market outcomes of the most at-risk individuals.