Local labour market resilience: The role of digitalisation and working from home

Ben Yahmed, Sarra, Berlingieri, Francesco and Brüll, Eduard (2025) Local labour market resilience: The role of digitalisation and working from home. Journal of Regional Science. ISSN 0022-4146

Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)

Abstract

This article shows that digital capital and working from home were essential for the resilience of local labour markets in the context of the COVID-19 crisis in Germany. Employment responses differed widely across local labour markets, with differences in short-time work rates of up to 30 percentage points at the beginning of the pandemic. Using recent advancements in the difference-in-differences approach with a continuous treatment, we find that digital capital potential higher by one standard deviation led to a short-time work rate that was lower by 1.5 percentage points on average at the onset of the shock. The effect was nonlinear, disproportionately disadvantaging regions at the lower end of the digital capital distribution. We also find that working from home potential led to lower short-time work, especially during the first lockdown period. However, digital capital smoothed the employment shock beyond the effect of remote work, extending into 2021. Moreover, local digital capital potential increased the adoption of remote work after the shock.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Data Availability Statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Funding information: This study was conducted as part of the DFG project “Regional Economic Disparities in the Aftermath of the COVID-19 Outbreak: the role of Digitalisation and Working from home” (grant number 458454974).
Uncontrolled Keywords: covid-19 crisis,digitalisation,employment,information and communication technologies,local labour markets,resilience,short-time work,working from home,development,environmental science (miscellaneous) ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3303
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Economics
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Gender and Its Intersections
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Applied Econometrics And Finance
Related URLs:
Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 17 Sep 2025 08:30
Last Modified: 17 Sep 2025 08:30
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/100418
DOI: 10.1111/jors.70013

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item