Bryan Mark, Bryce Andrew, Rice Nigel, Roberts Jennifer, Sechel Cristina
Department of Economics, University of Sheffield, UK.
Department of Economics and Related Studies and Centre for Health Economics, University of York, UK.
Labour Econ. 2022 Oct;78:102253. doi: 10.1016/j.labeco.2022.102253. Epub 2022 Aug 28.
People with long-term mental health problems that affect their daily activities are a growing proportion of the UK working population and they have a particularly low employment rate. We analyse gaps in labour market outcomes between mental health disabled and non-disabled people during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. We also decompose the outcome gaps in order to explore the relative importance of different factors in explaining these gaps. Our results suggest that the employment effects of the pandemic for mental health disabled people may have been temporary. However, they were more likely to be away from work and/or working reduced hours than people without a disability. Workers with mental health disability were over-represented in part-time work and in caring, leisure and other service occupations, which were disproportionately affected by COVID-19 and the economic response. This is important new evidence on the contribution of segmentation and segregation in explaining the labour market position of people with mental health disability. The longer term effects of the pandemic were still not apparent at the end of our analysis period (2021:Q3), but the concentration of disabled workers in cyclically sensitive sectors and part-time work means that they will always be particularly vulnerable to economic downturns.
长期患有影响日常活动的心理健康问题的人群，在英国劳动人口中的占比日益增加，且他们的就业率特别低。我们分析了英国新冠疫情期间心理健康残疾者与非残疾者在劳动力市场结果方面的差距。我们还对结果差距进行了分解，以探究不同因素在解释这些差距方面的相对重要性。我们的结果表明，疫情对心理健康残疾者的就业影响可能是暂时的。然而，与非残疾者相比，他们更有可能缺勤和/或减少工作时长。患有心理健康残疾的劳动者在兼职工作以及护理、休闲和其他服务职业中占比过高，而这些职业受到新冠疫情和经济应对措施的影响尤为严重。这是关于分割和隔离在解释心理健康残疾者劳动力市场地位方面所起作用的重要新证据。在我们的分析期结束时（2021年第三季度），疫情的长期影响仍不明显，但残疾劳动者集中在周期性敏感行业和兼职工作中，这意味着他们将始终特别容易受到经济衰退的影响。
