Who are the essential and frontline workers?
Who are the essential and frontline workers?
复制标题
谁是重要的和前线的工作人员？
DOI：
10.1057/s11369-021-00230-7
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发表时间：
2021
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Meyerhofer PA
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Blau FD;Koebe J;Meyerhofer PA
识别基本和一线工作人员并了解他们的特征，有助于政策制定者和研究人员针对COVID-19危机制定社会保险和安全网政策，并分配个人防护设备（PPE）和疫苗等稀缺资源。我们制定了一个工作定义，并提供了这些工人的人口和劳动力市场构成的数据。我们首先将美国国土安全部（DHS）于2020年3月发布的官方行业指南应用于2018年和2019年美国社区调查的微观数据，以识别关键工人，无论其行业的实际运营状况如何。然后，我们使用工人职业组（Dingel和Neiman）中在家工作的可行性，以确定那些最有可能在2020年3月/4月COVID-19危机早期亲自工作的前线工人。第三步，我们排除了当时关闭或在有限需求下运行的行业（Vavra）。我们发现，更广泛的基本工人群体构成了劳动力的很大一部分，并往往反映其人口和劳动力市场的特点。相比之下，较窄的一线工人类别平均受教育程度较低，工资较低，男性、弱势少数群体，特别是西班牙裔和移民的代表性较高。即使排除关闭或在有限水平上运营的行业，这些结果也是成立的。当考虑到联邦指导方针随时间的变化时，使用2020年12月的指导方针（包括教育部门等一些额外的工人群体），基本工人和一线工人的结果相似。
Identifying essential and frontline workers and understanding their characteristics is useful for policymakers and researchers in targeting social insurance and safety net policies in response to the COVID-19 crisis and allocating scarce resources like personal protective equipment (PPE) and vaccines. We develop a working definition and provide data on the demographic and labor market composition of these workers. We first apply the official industry guidelines issued by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in March 2020 to microdata from the 2018 and 2019 American Community Survey to identify essential workers regardless of actual operation status of their industry. We then use the feasibility of work from home in the worker’s occupation group (Dingel and Neiman) to identify those most likely to be frontline workers who worked in-person early in the COVID-19 crisis in March/April 2020. In a third step, we exclude industries that were shut down or running under limited demand at that time (Vavra). We find that the broader group of essential workers comprises a large share of the labor force and tends to mirror its demographic and labor market characteristics. In contrast, the narrower category of frontline workers is, on average, less educated, has lower wages, and has a higher representation of men, disadvantaged minorities, especially Hispanics, and immigrants. These results hold even when excluding industries that were shut down or operating at a limited level. Results for essential and frontline workers are similar when accounting for changes in the federal guidelines over time by using the December 2020 guidelines which include a few additional groups of workers, including the education sector.