Jobs During the Pandemic: Re-Evaluating the Importance of Teleworkability, Contact-Intensity, and Being 'Essential'

This paper investigates the shock to labour demand from the government’s large-scale emergency policy response to COVID-19. A primary goal being to identify which occupational characteristics elicit significant responses to COVID-19 policy. A secondary goal was to evaluate the allocation efficiency of federal business assistance programs during COVID-19. This paper utilizes high-frequency Canadian online job postings data provided by the Labour Market Information Council (LMIC) in a Random Effects regression framework. This paper finds that occupations classified as teleworkable or essential experienced a decrease in labour demand during the pandemic. This non-intuitive result could be attributable to the assumption that COVID-19 and its policies only influence labour demand changes from a business feasibility perspective.