The Effectiveness of Job-Retention Schemes: COVID-19 Evidence From the German States

Download or read book The Effectiveness of Job-Retention Schemes: COVID-19 Evidence From the German States written by Mr. Shekhar Aiyar and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2021-10 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kurzarbeit (KA), Germany’s short-time work program, is widely credited with saving jobs and supporting domestic demand during the COVID-19 recession. We quantify the impact by exploiting state-level variation in exposure to the pandemic shock and KA take-up. We construct a shift-share measure of the labor demand shock and instrument KA take-up using the pre-existing, state-specific share of workers eligible for KA. We find, first, that KA was crucial in mitigating unemployment: absent its expansion the unemployment rate would have increased by an additional 3 pp on average at the trough of the recession. Second, KA also bolstered domestic demand: the contraction in consumption could have been 2 to 3 times larger absent the program. Finally, we provide preliminary evidence on the sensitivity of the medium-run reallocation of resources to the prevalence of jobretention schemes during the Global Financial Crisis.