Abstract
Unemployed benefit recipients are stigmatized and generally perceived negatively in terms of their personality characteristics and employability. The COVID19 economic shock led to rapid public policy responses across the globe to lessen the impact of mass unemployment, potentially shifting community perceptions of individuals who are out of work and rely on government income support. We used a repeated cross-sections design to study change in stigma tied to unemployment and benefit receipt in a pre-existing pre-COVID19 sample (n = 260) and a sample collected during COVID19 pandemic (n = 670) by using a vignette-based experiment. Participants rated attributes of characters who were described as being employed, working poor, unemployed or receiving unemployment benefits. The results show that compared to employed characters, unemployed characters were rated substantially less favorably at both time points on their employability and personality traits. The difference in perceptions of the employed and unemployed was, however, attenuated during COVID19 with benefit recipients perceived as more employable and more Conscientious than pre-pandemic. These results add to knowledge about the determinants of welfare stigma highlighting the impact of the global economic and health crisis on perception of others.
Highlights
The onset of COVID19 pandemic saw unemployment climb to the highest rate since the Great Depression in many regions globally1
COVID19 and Perceptions of Employability In Australia, a number of economic responses were rapidly introduced including a wage subsidy scheme (Jobkeeper) to enable employees to keep their employees connected to the workforce, one-off payments to many welfare recipients, and a doubling of the usual rate of the unemployment benefits (Jobseeker payment) through a new Coronavirus supplement payment
This was likely reflective of the employment rate nearly doubling in Australia during COVID19 crisis
Summary
The onset of COVID19 pandemic saw unemployment climb to the highest rate since the Great Depression in many regions globally. From March to April 2020 unemployment rate in the United States increased from 4.4% to over 14.7% and in Australia the effective rate of unemployment increased from 5.4 to 11.7% (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2020). A rich research literature from a range of disciplines has documented the pervasive negative community views toward those who are unemployed and receiving unemployment benefits, with the extent of this “welfare stigma” being pronounced in countries with highly targeted benefit systems such as the United States and Australia (Fiske et al, 2002; Baumberg, 2012; Contini and Richiardi, 2012; Schofield and Butterworth, 2015). The changing context related to the COVID19 crisis provides a novel opportunity to better understand the determinants of stigmatizing perceptions of unemployment and benefit receipt
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