Employment Transitions Among Older Americans During the Initial Lockdown and Early Reopening Months of the COVID-19 Recession

This study examines the employment status of older Americans in the months immediately before and after the peak COVID-19 lockdown in April 2020. The authors construct longitudinal employment data from 2019–2020 Current Population Surveys. To account for seasonal fluctuations in employment and retirement patterns that are not unique to the COVID-19 recession, they implement a difference-in-differences analysis using multinomial logistic regressions. They find that the onset of the pandemic immediately and adversely affected all workers, but the extent of the employment disruptions varied by age group, sex, and whether the worker has a college degree. Reemployment patterns after the peak lockdown month also varied but did not simply reverse the earlier patterns. The findings imply that the employment effects of the COVID-19 recession are substantially different from those of previous recessions