College Graduates Are Less Likely To Become Unemployed Due To The Coronavirus

New research shows college graduates are less likely to lose their job during the coronavirus outbreak than those without a degree. That’s the finding documented in a working paper that is part of the COVID Inequality Project, a project interested in understanding how the pandemic and government policies are impacting inequality. The paper traces how the coronavirus is exacerbating existing inequality.

Surveying nearly 17,000 people in the United States and United Kingdom, researchers found that college graduates were eight percentage points less likely to lose their job due to the fallout from COVID-19 than workers without a college degree. In the United Kingdom, this gap was six percentage points. College graduates were also less likely to experience income losses.

Much of this could be related to the kinds of jobs college graduates hold. Not surprising given the social distancing measures in place, the study found that the likelihood of losing your job because of the coronavirus is related to being able to work from home. Workers in the United States that can perform all of their job from home were 33 percentage points less likely to have lost their job than those who can perform none of their job at home.

Women were more likely to lose their jobs than men, regardless of education. The survey found that women in the United States are seven percentage points more likely to lose their jobs than men. This could be partially due to the fact that women were less likely to be able to work from home.

The authors of the study suggest it is possible this is due to women spending more time at home caring for children and homeschooling them. In the survey, women reported spending more time doing so than men.

These findings reveal just how the coronavirus is intensifying inequalities in today’s economy. And this will matter going forward after the coronavirus has subsided. Once we can begin to relax social distancing measures and reopen much of the economy, how we recover will also likely impact people differently.

Evidence from the Great Recession shows that those with college degrees did the best in the recovery. A study of Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed that all net new jobs created after the recession went to college graduates. Millions of Americans without a college degree lost jobs from 2008 to 2013 that never came back. If this happens again, we will leave even more people behind.

As policymakers consider what to do to help Americans recover from this crisis, they must keep these findings in mind. Policies that don’t consider the worsened inequalities will set us up for failure and will perpetuate these disparities.