Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between broadband Internet access and digital skills, and employment outcomes using the pre- and post-COVID-19 survey waves of the Eurostat Community Statistics on Information Society from 2017, 2019, and 2021 in 27 European countries. Joint estimates of individuals’ employment status and skills employ external controls based on Eurostat and COVID-19 European Regional Tracker NUTS1-level regional statistics and Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker information on governments’ containment and economic support measures. Broadband Internet is associated with 4–6% higher labor-market participation and 5–7% higher employment in non-manual occupations. The skill–employment link is sizeable. On average, tertiary education and digital proficiency are connected with a 25% lower chance of unemployment and a 30% higher likelihood of non-manual employment. While the positive association between educational attainment level and employment outcomes strengthened evenly over the COVID-19 period, the patterns for digital skills reveal non-uniformity across skill levels. Employment advantages rose at the lower and shrank at the higher ends of the digital skills distribution. This demonstrates that COVID-19 containment measures resulted in asymmetric labor-supply disruptions across employee groups. Post COVID-19, within-household spill-lovers from tertiary education into family members’ employment status more than tripled.

Keywords: Employment, broadband Internet access, digital skills, intra-household skill spill-overs, Community Statistics on Information Society (CSIS), extended regressions

JEL codes: C3, D13, E24, J21, J24

Authors:

Kadri Männasoo - Department of Economics and Finance, Tallinn University of Technology
Jon Pareliussen - OECD
Artjom Saia - Department of Economics and Finance, Tallinn University of Technology

The public research seminars of the Department of Economics and Finance (DEF) at Tallinn University of Technology  usually take place on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month in both onsite and online format, unless announced otherwise. The presentation will last approximately 45 minutes followed by 15 minutes of discussion. The seminars are held in English. Copies of the paper are usually made available at the seminar. The DEF seminar series is organised in collaboration with the project ”Individual Behaviour and Economic  Performance: Methodological  Challenges and Institutional Context” (IBEP), which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 952574. Questions about the seminar can be sent to the IBEP seminar coordinator Kadri Männasoo, kadri.mannasoo@taltech.ee.