key: cord-0700264-9dya3dq9 authors: Asfaw, Abay title: Cost of lost work hours associated with the COVID‐19 pandemic—United States, March 2020 through February 2021 date: 2021-11-04 journal: Am J Ind Med DOI: 10.1002/ajim.23307 sha: 0d711e75750e47b8cbd75d6adcfe4f37f8519d41 doc_id: 700264 cord_uid: 9dya3dq9 INTRODUCTION: Of the 22.8 million coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) cases recorded in the United States as of March 21, 2021 with age information, three‐fourths were in the workingage group, indicating the potentially high economic impact of the pandemic. This study estimates the cost of lost work hours associated with the COVID‐19 pandemic between March 2020 through February 2021. METHOD: I used a before‐and‐after analysis of data from the 2017–2021 Current Population Survey to estimate the costs of lost work hours due to economic, workers' own health, and other reasons, from the COVID‐19 pandemic. RESULTS: Across March 2020 through February 2021 (a year since the start of the pandemic in the United States), the estimated cost of lost work hours associated with the COVID‐19 pandemic among US full‐time workers was $138 billion (95% confidence interval [CI]: $73.4 billion–$202.46 billion). Shares of the costs attributed to economic, workers' own health, and other reasons were 33.7%, 13.7%, and 52.6%, respectively. CONCLUSION: The $138 billion cost of lost work hours associated with the COVID‐19 pandemic during March 2020 through February 2021 highlights the economic consequences of the pandemic, as well as indicating the potential benefit of public health and safety interventions used to mitigate COVID‐19 spread. were not included in the analysis. problems. Therefore, absence due to childcare problems was considered a COVID-19-related reason. 12 Finally, although CPS respondents who described reasons as "other" were asked to specify the reasons, the publicly available CPS data do not include that information. New reasons for absence from work during COVID-19 are not included as responses in the CPS standard reasons. Therefore, "other" was considered a COVID-19-related reason. In the absence of a randomized, controlled trial, different quasiexperimental methods can be used to examine the effect of an intervention or event on outcomes. 13, 14 Difference-in-differences, uncontrolled before-and-after, time series designs, and controlled beforeand-after are the most used quasi-experimental methods. 13, 15, 16 Among those, I used the uncontrolled before-and-after method to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the number of work hours lost, because the other methods require a control group that has not been affected by the intervention. The term uncontrolled indicates that the before-and-after comparison is not between intervention groups and control groups not affected by the intervention. The uncontrolled before-and-after method compares the number of work hours lost 1 year before the COVID-19 pandemic with the number of work hours lost within a year after the pandemic started. Methods such as human capital approach (HCA), fraction cost, and multiplier are used in the literature to value productivity losses due to work hours lost. [20] [21] [22] [23] The HCA measures individuals' contribution to society in terms of a stream of output (productivity) over their lifetime. 24 It uses gross wages to estimate productivity by assuming that employers equate marginal productivity of labor to its marginal cost. 25, 26 The fraction cost method focuses on the time required to restore the productivity lost due to the absent worker. [26] [27] [28] It is argued that the fraction cost method better estimates lost productivity due to absenteeism than does the HCA method. 23, 27 However, the fraction cost method is data-intensive, requiring detailed information on costs of replacing a worker, vacancy duration, and indirect cost during a fraction period and requiring more complex calculations 23, 27 that are beyond the scope of this article. The multiplier method assumes that the productivity loss of a worker should be evaluated in the context of its impact on coworkers and overall output. It is computed as the ratio of the total loss of team production and the individual gross wage of the absentee. [29] [30] [31] However, it is not easy to estimate the magnitude of the multiplier. 31 In this study, the HCA was used to monetize the cost of work The estimated numbers of work hours lost due to workers' own years due to workers' own health reasons, indicating that there was no evidence of history threat. See Figure 1B and Table 2 Total work hours lost due to childcare problems were excluded from the total column because the variable did not satisfy the "no history threat" assumption. In the case of work hours lost due to childcare problems, the hypothesis that there was no evidence of history threat could not be rejected. See Figure 1C and Table 2 See Table 3 for the details. The overall economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is enormous. Using macro level data, studies estimated the economic burden of the pandemic in the United States to be $2.14 trillion Note: Sample sizes are reported in Table 2 Overall, the estimated cost of lost work hours associated with the COVID-19 pandemic among US full-time workers due to economic, workers' own health, and other reasons within 1 year was $138 billion (95% CI: $73 billion-$202 billion). See Table 3 in the labor force aged 20-64 showed that COVID-19 decreased the total weekly work hours by 32%. 32 Second, also excluded were costs associated with presenteeism, lost home production, reduced productivity of coworkers, and lost outputs due to premature mortality. Third, the average hourly wage was estimated solely on the basis of the wage that respondents reported and did not include benefits. Sixth, the study did not account for any population increase, which might underestimate the estimated cost of lost work hours associated with the pandemic. 32 Finally, because workday absence due to childcare problems was subject to historical bias, it was not included in the total computed costs. This study also provides preliminary data for potential studies to analyze any disproportionate burdens of the cost of lost work hours on specific occupational or demographic groups. The author thanks Matthew Groenewold, Regina Pana-Cryan, Brian Quay, Tim Bushnell, and Toni Alterman, all of CDC, for their valuable comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of the paper, and Ms. Seleen Collins for her excellent editorial assistance. The author declares that there are no conflicts of interest. Paul A. Landsbergis declares that he has no conflict of interest in the review and publication decision regarding this article. Abay Asfaw designed and conceptualized the study, conducted the empirical analysis, drafted the work, and interpreted the results. APPENDIX A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. COVID Data Tracker. 2021. 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Cost of lost work hours associated with the COVID-19 pandemic-United States