Abstract
Like most countries, the Swiss government adopted drastic measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus. These measures were aimed at avoiding close physical proximity between people. The adverse economic consequences of this lockdown policy became immediately apparent, with almost two million workers, or more than every third worker in Switzerland, being put on short-time work within only 6 weeks after the policy’s implementation. In an attempt to promptly assess the heterogeneous consequences of this lockdown policy, we computed a lockdown index. This index is based on an occupation’s dependence on physical proximity to other people and corrected for certain essential sectors being exempt from this policy. We find that on average, 31% of jobs in Switzerland have been potentially restricted by the lockdown policy. This average masks considerable heterogeneity along many dimensions, with the strongest effects for the large industries hospitality, construction, and arts and entertainment. With respect to the regional variation, we find the strongest effects for the cantons of Obwalden, Uri, Appenzell Innerrhoden, and Valais. Moreover, low- and middle-income individuals are considerably more restricted than high-income ones. We do not find meaningful differences between men and women or urban and rural areas. Finally, we test the explanatory power of the lockdown index for short-time work and unemployment increases by canton and industry until the end of April 2020 and find that it can explain up to 58% of these short-term employment outcomes.
Highlights
The fast spread of the coronavirus has caused economic crises all around the globe
Some essential sectors were excluded from these measures and remained more or less unconstrained despite their physical proximity character. We identify these sectors in our sample through the General Classification of Economic Activities 2008 (NOGA-08) and set a lockdown index of 0 for workers employed in these sectors
3 Results we calculate the lockdown index for Switzerland and link it to the observed development on the labor market during the COVID-19 pandemic
Summary
The fast spread of the coronavirus has caused economic crises all around the globe. In Switzerland, the first patient with COVID-19 was detected on February 25, 2020. The virus quickly spread around the country, such that in the early stages of the pandemic, Switzerland was among the countries with the highest prevalence of positive COVID-19 cases in Europe. Despite the comparatively high prevalence of positive cases in the first half of March, Switzerland initially adopted only relatively mild measures, such as contact tracing via phone calls or the prohibition of events with more than 1000 participants, to contain the spread of the virus. A few days later, on March 16, the government announced the so-called “extraordinary situation,” which entailed even stricter measures. These measures included the closures of shops, restaurants and bars, entertainment and leisure facilities, as well as the prohibition of all public and private events. The government called on the public to avoid all unnecessary contact, keep distance from others, Faber et al Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (2020) 156:11
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