IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/9240.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

When Face-to-Face Interactions Become an Occupational Hazard : Jobs in the Time of COVID-19

Author

Listed:
  • Avdiu,Besart
  • Nayyar,Gaurav

Abstract

There is a crisis of demand brewing around the globe as social distancing becomes the norm to counter the COVID-19 outbreak. So, which parts of the economy are most in the line of fire? Looking at jobs that can be done at home or that require a high degree of face-to-face interactions with consumers can capture complementary but distinct mechanisms to assess this vulnerability. This paper uses data on 900 job titles from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) database for the United States to demonstrate that there is substantial heterogeneity in vulnerability across industries, income groups, and gender. First, industries vary in whether they emphasize face-to-face interactions and home-based work and the two do not always go hand-in-hand. Second, occupations that are less amenable to home-based work are largely concentrated among the lower wage deciles. Third, a larger share of women's employment is accounted for by occupations that are intensive in face-to-face interactions.

Suggested Citation

  • Avdiu,Besart & Nayyar,Gaurav, 2020. "When Face-to-Face Interactions Become an Occupational Hazard : Jobs in the Time of COVID-19," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9240, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9240
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/173701589222966874/pdf/When-Face-to-Face-Interactions-Become-an-Occupational-Hazard-Jobs-in-the-Time-of-COVID-19.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dingel, Jonathan I. & Neiman, Brent, 2020. "How many jobs can be done at home?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    2. Oldenski, Lindsay, 2012. "Export Versus FDI and the Communication of Complex Information," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 312-322.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Natalia Porto & Pablo De la Vega, 2021. "Employment and teleworking in the tourism sector during the COVID-19 pandemic. The case of Argentina," Asociación Argentina de Economía Política: Working Papers 4506, Asociación Argentina de Economía Política.
    2. Yuan, Kaibin & Li, Wanli & Zhang, Weijun, 2023. "Your next bank is not necessarily a bank: FinTech expansion and bank branch closures," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    3. Tanaka, Kiyoyasu, 2023. "What hinders digital communication? Evidence from foreign firms in Japan," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    4. Shao, Wen-Chao & Zhang, Han & Chou, Li-Chen & Ye, Xi-Xi, 2023. "Comparing athletes’ mastery of salary information before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from the national basketball association," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    5. Köhler, Timothy & Bhorat, Haroon & Hill, Robert & Stanwix, Benjamin, 2023. "Lockdown stringency and employment formality: evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa," Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 57, pages 1-3.
    6. Cueva,Ronald & Del Carpio,Ximena Vanessa & Winkler,Hernan Jorge, 2021. "The Impacts of COVID-19 on Informal Labor Markets : Evidence from Peru," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9675, The World Bank.
    7. Meng-Ying Wang & Li-Chen Chou, 2024. "Evaluating information asymmetry effects on hotel pricing: a comparative analysis before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Taiwan’s market," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-12, December.
    8. Tobias Otterbring, 2023. "Physical proximity as pleasure or pain? A critical review of employee–customer proximity in sales and services settings," Journal of Financial Services Marketing, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 28(2), pages 209-221, June.
    9. Schettino, Francesco & Scicchitano, Sergio & Suppa, Domenico, 2024. "COVID 19 and Wage Polarization: A task based approach," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1398, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    10. Richard Florida & Todd Gabe, 2023. "COVID-19, the New Urban Crisis, and Cities: How COVID-19 Compounds the Influence of Economic Segregation and Inequality on Metropolitan Economic Performance," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 37(4), pages 328-348, November.
    11. Ali Zarifhonarvar, 2023. "A Survey on the Impact of Covid-19 on the Labor Market," The Journal of Social Sciences Research, Academic Research Publishing Group, vol. 9(1), pages 1-10, 03-2023.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Avdiu, Besart & Nayyar, Gaurav, 2020. "When face-to-face interactions become an occupational hazard: Jobs in the time of COVID-19," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 197(C).
    2. Couch, Kenneth A. & Fairlie, Robert W. & Xu, Huanan, 2020. "Early evidence of the impacts of COVID-19 on minority unemployment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    3. Jacek Rothert, 2020. "Optimal federal redistribution during the uncoordinated response to a pandemic," Departmental Working Papers 64, United States Naval Academy Department of Economics.
    4. Piotr Lewandowski & Katarzyna Lipowska & Mateusz Smoter, 2022. "Working from home during a pandemic – a discrete choice experiment in Poland," IBS Working Papers 03/2022, Instytut Badan Strukturalnych.
    5. Lee, Munseob & Finerman, Rachel, 2021. "COVID-19, commuting flows, and air quality," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    6. Bart Roelofs & Dimitris Ballas & Hinke Haisma & Arjen Edzes, 2022. "Spatial mobility patterns and COVID‐19 incidence: A regional analysis of the second wave in the Netherlands," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(S1), pages 21-40, November.
    7. Lewandowski, Piotr & Lipowska, Katarzyna & Smoter, Mateusz, 2023. "Mismatch in preferences for working from home: Evidence from discrete choice experiments with workers and employers," Ruhr Economic Papers 1026, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    8. Juan C. Palomino & Juan G. Rodríguez & Raquel Sebastian, 2023. "The COVID-19 shock on the labour market: poverty and inequality effects across Spanish regions," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(5), pages 814-828, May.
    9. Claudia Hupkau & Barbara Petrongolo, 2020. "Work, Care and Gender during the COVID‐19 Crisis," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(3), pages 623-651, September.
    10. David Baqaee & Emmanuel Farhi, 2020. "Nonlinear Production Networks with an Application to the Covid-19 Crisis," NBER Working Papers 27281, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Gottlieb Charles & Grobovšek Jan & Poschke Markus & Saltiel Fernando, 2022. "Lockdown Accounting," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 22(1), pages 197-210, January.
    12. Graham, James & Ozbilgin, Murat, 2021. "Age, industry, and unemployment risk during a pandemic lockdown," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    13. Basso, Gaetano & Boeri, Tito & Caiumi, Alessandro & Paccagnella, Marco, 2020. "The New Hazardous Jobs and Worker Reallocation," IZA Discussion Papers 13532, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Carlos Díaz & Sebastian Fossati & Nicolás Trajtenberg, 2022. "Stay at home if you can: COVID‐19 stay‐at‐home guidelines and local crime," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(4), pages 1067-1113, December.
    15. Louis-Philippe Beland & Abel Brodeur & Taylor Wright, 2020. "COVID-19, Stay-at-Home Orders and Employment: Evidence from CPS Data," Carleton Economic Papers 20-04, Carleton University, Department of Economics, revised 19 May 2020.
    16. John McLaren & Su Wang, 2020. "Effects of Reduced Workplace Presence on COVID-19 Deaths: An Instrumental-Variables Approach," NBER Working Papers 28275, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Kouki, Amairisa, 2023. "Beyond the “Comforts” of work from home: Child health and the female wage penalty," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    18. Stefano Magrini & Alessandro Spiganti, 2021. "The Day After Covid-19: Implications for Growth, Specialization, and Inequality," Working Papers 2021:13, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    19. Nizamani, Sarah & Waheed, Muhammad Shahid, 2020. "Poverty and Inequality amid COVID-19 – Evidence from Pakistan’s Labour Market," MPRA Paper 100422, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. John Gathergood & Fabian Gunzinger & Benedict Guttman-Kenney & Edika Quispe-Torreblanca & Neil Stewart, 2020. "Levelling Down and the COVID-19 Lockdowns: Uneven Regional Recovery in UK Consumer Spending," Papers 2012.09336, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2020.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9240. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.