Unions and hazard pay for COVID‐19: Evidence from the Canadian Labour Force Survey

Abstract

In this article, we examine whether (and by how much) workers in Canada have been compensated for the ‘novel’ risks associated with COVID‐19. We create a unique dataset from a system that scores occupations in the US O*NET database for COVID‐19 exposure. We then combine those COVID exposure scores with Canadian occupational data contained in the Public Use Microdata File of the Labour Force Survey. This allows us to categorize Canadian occupations based on COVID‐19 exposure risk. We find a long‐tailed distribution of COVID‐19 risk scores across occupations, with most jobs at the lower end of the risk spectrum and relatively few occupations accounting for most of the high COVID‐19 exposure risk. We find that workers who are already more vulnerable in the labour market (i.e. youth, women and immigrants) are also more likely to be employed in occupations with high COVID‐19 exposure risk. When we look at the relationship between high‐COVID exposure risks in occupation and wages, we find negative compensating differentials both at the mean (negative 8%) and across the earnings distribution. However, when workers are covered by a union, they enjoy a sizeable hazard pay premium (11.7% on average) as compared to their non‐union counterparts. Furthermore, we find that the moderating effects of unionization for workers at high risk of COVID exposure to be largest at the bottom of the earnings distribution (i.e. the 10th percentile of unionized earners receives a 12.3% risk premium for high‐COVID exposure, whereas the 90th percentile receives only a 2%).

The Impact of COVID–19 on the Level and Structure of Employment in European Union Countries

“…Different effects of the pandemic on the economy have been studied in the literature, such as supply chains breaking up (Maital and Barzani 2020), changes in foreign trade (Cardoso and Malloy 2021), and the collapse of tourism due to border closures and other limitations (Rami and Wahba 2021). The influence on the labour market has been discussed for countries with different economies, cultures and sizes, e.g., Canada (Beland, Fakorede, and Mikola 2020;Qian and Fuller 2020;Lamb, Gomez, and Moghaddas 2021), the USA (Lambert 2020;Rojas et al 2020), Bangladesh (Hossain 2021), Romania (Radulescu et al 2021), Turkey (Yüksel 2021), the UK (Mayhew and Anand 2020), Vietnam (Le et al 2021), Australia (Borland 2020a(Borland , 2020bLim et al 2021;Lloyd and Dixon 2021;Walkowiak 2021), Spain (Rodríguez-López, Rubio-Valdehita, andDíaz-Ramiro 2021;Rubio-Valdehita, Rodríguez-López, and Marín 2021), Cameroon (Biwolé 2022), India (Roychowdhury, Bose, and De Roy 2022), Poland (Rosak-Szyrocka 2021), and Japan (Fukai, Ichimura, and Kawata, 2021).…”

Covid-19 Impact on Labour Market in Eu Countries – Differences in Men and Women Employment Rate Tendencies

“…Research on the COVID pandemic's impact on the economy, including the labour market, is carried out for almost all countries worldwide. For demonstration purposes, the first ten countries from the research list are quoted here, including Australia (Borland, 2020a(Borland, , 2020bLim et al, 2021;Lloyd & Dixon, 2021;Walkowiak, 2021); Bangladesh (Hossain, 2021); Canada (Beland et al, 2020b;Qian & Fuller, 2020;Lamb et al, 2021); Cameroon (Biwolé, 2021); Denmark (Soested & Videbaek Munkholm, 2020); Estonia (Foresight Centre, 2020); France (Hadjibeyli et al, 2021); Germany (Bauer & Weber, 2021); Guatemala (Diaz-Bonilla et al, 2022); Honduras (Aterido et al, 2021;Bachas et al, 2021); India (Roychowdhury et al, 2022); and Japan (Fukai et al, 2021).…”

The Differential Impact of COVID-19 on Labour Market Outcomes of Immigrants in Canada

“… 7 The coding of this variable is based on Lamb, Gomez, and Moghaddas (2021) where they identified occupations with COVID-risk score higher than a natural cut-off in the data as the high-risk occupations. The ranking system scored occupations in the O*NET database for exposure risk to COVID-19 and matched it with Canadian occupational data contained in the Public Use Microdata File of the Labour Force Survey.…”