Abouk Rahi, Earle John S, Maclean Johanna Catherine, Park Sungbin
William Paterson University, 300 Pompton Road, Wayne, NJ, 07470.
Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, 3351 Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22201.
Labour Econ. 2025 Oct;96. doi: 10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102715. Epub 2025 Apr 2.
We study the effect of mandates requiring COVID-19 vaccination among healthcare industry workers adopted in 2021 in the United States. There are long-standing worker shortages in the U.S. healthcare industry, pre-dating the COVID-19 pandemic. The impact of COVID-19 vaccine mandates on shortages is ex ante ambiguous. If mandates increase perceived safety of the healthcare industry, marginal workers may be drawn to healthcare, relaxing shortages. On the other hand, if marginal workers are vaccine hesitant or averse, then mandates may push workers away from the industry and exacerbate shortages. We combine monthly data from the Current Population Survey 2021 to 2022 with difference-in-differences methods to study the effects of state vaccine mandates on the probability of working in healthcare, and on employment transitions into and out of the industry. Our findings suggest that vaccine mandates may worsen healthcare workforce shortages: following adoption of a state-level mandate, the probability of working in the healthcare industry declines by 6%. Effects are larger among workers in healthcare-specific occupations, who leave the industry at higher rates in response to mandates and are slower to be replaced than workers in non-healthcare occupations. Findings suggest trade-offs faced by health policymakers seeking to achieve multiple health objectives.
我们研究了2021年美国在医疗行业工作人员中实施的新冠疫苗接种强制令的影响。在美国医疗行业，早在新冠疫情之前就长期存在劳动力短缺问题。新冠疫苗强制令对劳动力短缺的影响在事前并不明确。如果强制令提高了医疗行业的感知安全性，边缘劳动者可能会被吸引到医疗行业，缓解短缺状况。另一方面，如果边缘劳动者对疫苗持犹豫或反感态度，那么强制令可能会使劳动者离开该行业，加剧短缺。我们将2021年至2022年当前人口调查的月度数据与差分法相结合，以研究州疫苗强制令对从事医疗行业的概率以及进出该行业的就业转换的影响。我们的研究结果表明，疫苗强制令可能会加剧医疗劳动力短缺：在实施州一级的强制令后，从事医疗行业的概率下降了6%。在特定医疗职业的劳动者中，影响更大，他们因强制令而以更高的比率离开该行业，而且与非医疗职业的劳动者相比，被替代的速度更慢。研究结果表明，寻求实现多个健康目标的卫生政策制定者面临着权衡。
