Employment changes by employer size during the COVID-19 pandemic: a look at the Current Employment Statistics survey microdata

Abstract

This paper expands on previous work analyzing employment changes by employer size during the pandemic by incorporating additional months of new data (October and November 2020) and examining job loss by both employer size class and detailed industries. Continuing trends observed since mid-summer, we observe continued faster job recovery among large employers than among smaller employers. Furthermore, establishments of large employers known to have multiple establishments have fared better than large employers with only a single-establishment. Within small employers, we find that employment loss due to closures has declined only a small amount since July, going from 2.8% to 2.3% in November. For large employers, employment loss due to closures has been less than 1% since June. JEL codes: E24, J21, J23, J63