The impact of Covid-19 on older workers' employment and Social Security spillovers.

ABSTRACT: The COVID-19 pandemic represents a major threat to health and economic well-being in the USA, especially for older and disabled workers, and may spill over onto Social Security. We use individual-level from the Current Population Survey, state-level monthly Social Security administrative data on disability benefit applications, and national-level monthly data on Social Security retirement benefit applications to assess the impact of the pandemic on older adults' employment and benefit claiming. State-level monthly Google Trends data are used as a leading indicator of future claiming in the population. We find that employment for older workers dropped substantially more than would have been predicted prior to the pandemic: employment for 50-61-year-olds was 5.7 pp (8.3 percent) lower, while

SUBMITTER: Goda GS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9251032 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature