Abstract
Social distancing interventions can be effective against epidemics but are potentially detrimental for the economy. Businesses that rely heavily on face-to-face communication or close physical proximity when producing a product or providing a service are particularly vulnerable. There is, however, no systematic evidence about the role of human interactions across different lines of business and about which will be the most limited by social distancing. Here we provide theory-based measures of the reliance of U.S. businesses on human interaction, detailed by industry and geographic location. We find that, before the pandemic hit, 43 million workers worked in occupations that rely heavily on face-to-face communication or require close physical proximity to other workers. Many of these workers lost their jobs since. Consistently with our model, employment losses have been largest in sectors that rely heavily on customer contact and where these contacts dropped the most: retail, hotels and restaurants, arts and entertainment and schools. Our results can help quantify the economic costs of social distancing.
Highlights
Social distancing measures are effective non-pharmaceutical interventions against the rapid spread of epidemics [1,2,3,4]
What are the economic effects of such social distancing interventions? Which businesses are most affected by the restrictions?
Past research has analyzed the efficacy of social distancing interventions on reducing the spread of epidemics using the 1918 Spanish Flu in the U.S [1,2,3] and seasonal viral infections in France [9]
Summary
Social distancing measures are effective non-pharmaceutical interventions against the rapid spread of epidemics [1,2,3,4]. Past research has analyzed the efficacy of social distancing interventions on reducing the spread of epidemics using the 1918 Spanish Flu in the U.S [1,2,3] and seasonal viral infections in France [9]. Our knowledge of economic impacts, is limited [10] For this question, past data may be less relevant, as the importance of face-to-face communication has increased steadily in the last 100 years through urbanization [11, 12] and specialization increased in business services as well [13, 14]. Even if advances in information and communication technology made it increasingly possible to communicate with co-workers and customers without the need for physical face-to-face interactions, personal contacts are still inevitable in some industries [15, 16]
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