Pandemics, Global Supply Chains, and Local Labor Demand: Evidence from 100 Million Posted Jobs in China

This paper studies how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected labor demand, using over 100 million posted jobs on one of the largest online platforms in China. Our data reveal that the number of newly posted jobs within the first 14 weeks after the Wuhan lockdown on January 23, 2020, was about 31% lower than that of comparable periods in 2018 and 2019. We show that, via the global supply chain, COVID-19 cases abroad and pandemic-control policies by foreign governments reduced new-job creation in China by 11.7%. We also find that firms most exposed to international trade outperformed other firms at the beginning of the pandemic but underperformed during the recovery as the virus spread throughout the world.