Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/259460 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Citation: 
[Journal:] Latin American Economic Review [ISSN:] 2196-436X [Volume:] 30 [Issue:] 1 [Article No.:] 1 [Publisher:] Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica (CIDE) [Place:] Ciudad de México [Year:] 2021 [Pages:] 1-42
Publisher: 
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica (CIDE), Ciudad de México
Abstract: 
There is a concern among social scientists and policymakers that the COVID-19 crisis might permanently change the nature of work. We study how labor demand in Mexico has been affected during the pandemic by web scraping job ads from a leading job search website. As in the U.S., the number of vacancies in Mexico declined sharply during the lockdown (38 percent). In April there was a change in the composition of labor demand, and wages dropped across the board. By May, however, the wage distribution and the distribution of job ads by occupation returned to their pre-pandemic levels. Overall, there was a slight decline in specific requirements (gender and age), no change in required experience, and a temporary increase in demand for low-skilled workers. Contrary to expectations, opportunities for telecommuting diminished during the pandemic. Using a simple Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, we find that the variation in the average advertised wage in April is explained more by a higher proportion of low-wage occupations than by a reduction in the wages paid for particular occupations. In sum, we find no evidence of a significant or permanent change in labor demand during the pandemic in Mexico.
Subjects: 
Job ads
Labor demand
Employment
Wag-es
COVID-19
Mexico
JEL: 
J20
J23
J30
J60
O54
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc-nd Logo
Document Type: 
Article

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