Effect of the pandemic-induced shift to teleworking on worker-level wage and hours worked
Date
2022-01
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Abstract
This study examines the effect of the pandemic-induced shift to teleworking
on worker-level wage and hours worked in the Philippines. Data from the October
2019 round and October 2020 round of the Philippine Labor Force Survey (LFS)
were used in order to compare pre-pandemic to pandemic figures. Specifically, this
study aims to look at the relationship between an occupation’s teleworkability score
and the change in its workers’ wages and hours worked by performing an Ordinary
Least Squares regression analysis. This paper finds that higher teleworkability of an
occupation is associated with lower wages and greater weekly work hours during the
pandemic. The reduction in wages may be explained by lower productivity, flexible
time arrangements and initial costs of implementing ICTs for telework which vary
across countries. Meanwhile, the increase in weekly work hours implies the blurring
of work-life boundaries and difficulty in adjusting to new technological tools among
workers in high teleworkable occupations.
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Keywords
pandemic, telework, wage, COVID-19, work hours