The Wage Bills of COVID-19

Abstract

issued stay-at-home orders, resulting in the full or partial closure of many non-essential businesses, a significant number of layoffs, and therefore a large amount of lost wages. Industries highly affected by the economic shutdown vary substantially in both how much output they produce and their degree of labor intensity—that is, how much labor they require to produce a certain level of output—suggesting that lost wages could be quite heterogeneous across industries. This short article provides rough estimates on the size of the wage loss associated with industries highly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.