Author(s)

Yimiao Wang

Corresponding Author

Yimiao Wang

ABSTRACT

The outbreak of COVID-19 has brought drastic pressure on economic development around the globe. With the introduction of pandemic control policies, its impact on economic development and labor force has also received worldwide attention and extensive discussion in academic circles. Using COVID-19 US state policy data and OEWS data, this paper constructs a fixed effect model to empirically investigate the effects of state COVID-19 control policies on the job market of service industry. Results show that: government's pandemic control policies have an elevating effect on wages in service industries; it has a divergent impact on employment in different types of service industries, with negative impact on employment in traditional service industries, boosting employment in digital services and healthcare industries, and a non-significant impact on employment in education. The robust test by replacing dependent variables proves that the research conclusion is robust. Therefore, the government should firstly, adopt diverse control policies for different industries, providing policy support to enterprises and workers adversely affected by the pandemic while achieving efficient prevention and control of COVID-19; secondly, the government should accelerate the digitization of producer services, promote digital economy to serve real economy, relieve the adverse impact of pandemic control on the service industry, and solve employment issues.

KEYWORDS

COVID-19, intervention policy, labor market, employment, service sector