Was ist wichtig? Die Corona-Pandemie als Impuls zur Neubewertung systemrelevanter Sektoren

To reduce the spread of the coronavirus, the German government implemented laws to restrict social and economic activities in March 2020. Only essential workers were encouraged to keep on working since their jobs were crucial to maintain the critical infrastructure. In this article, the authors focus on employment and in particular on the wages of these essential workers. Using the linked employer-employee data set (LIAB) of the IAB, they apply descriptive and regression analysis to show that the demographic characteristics of essential workers differ from those that command high prestige in normal times. They find that essential workers are disproportionately women working in part-time and primarily middle-skilled workers. Moreover, they observe that wages within critical infrastructure are quite heterogeneous: some sectors have wages far above, while others have wages far below the average. This finding holds when controlling for human capital endowment. The authors conclude that the crisis has revealed the relevance of these sectors and underlines the importance of re-evaluating pay level sectors.