Archive:Labour market in the light of the COVID 19 pandemic - quarterly statistics
This online publication contains articles on the impact of the of the Covid-19 pandemic on the labour market showing quarterly data.
Table of contents
1. Labour market slack
In the first quarter of 2020, the health crisis due to the COVID-19 hit the European Union, strongly affecting the economic life and the labour market. The lock-down implied a decrease and sometimes the complete shutdown of the business activity. The consequences on the labour market might be considerable: people might have lost their employment, recruitments can be postponed or frozen, people can make a break in their job search for family reasons or reduced their working hours to involuntary part-time among others.
This article aims to capture the labour market slack that refers to all the unmet needs for employment during theses specific circumstances. Looking only at the unemployment evolution may give a reduced and partial overview of the impact of the COVID crisis. As a matter of fact, people may given the situation neither be available anymore nor continue to seek actively a job, both are nevertheless required to be recorded as unemployed people. In order to provide a complete picture and reflect the whole potential demand for employment, this article includes the other categories inside or outside the labour force that should be considered in addition to unemployment, namely: the persons available to work but not seeking, the persons seeking but not immediately available as well as the underemployed part-time workers, those part-time workers who want to work more hours. All these categories together constitute the labour market slack. For comparability purpose, the concept of the labour force which only encompasses employed and unemployed people is extended to the categories of people available to work but not seeking or seeking but not immediately available, also named the additional potential labour force.