Table 2.

Labor market characteristics of essential and frontline workers: March 2020

This table lists labor market characteristics of essential and frontline workers. Essential workers are identified by mapping official industry guidelines issued by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on March 28, 2020 to microdata from the 2018 and 2019 American Community Survey. Frontline workers are approximated by their feasibility of work from home in the worker’s occupation group (Dingel and Neiman 2020). Shutdown adjusts for industries that were shutdown or running under limited demand early in the COVID crisis (Vavra 2020). Group averages are shown in Panel A. Panel B reports labor market characteristics at the major (2-digit) occupation group level for frontline workers, while Panel C additionally excludes shutdown industries. Labor market charateristics consist of the share of females, share of workers that work in predominantly female 4-digit occupations (70% or more of workers are female) or predominantly male 4-digit occupations (30% or less of the workers are female), hourly wages (income in 2019 dollars using the CPI divided by the product of usual hours worked per week and the mid-point of usual weeks worked per year), share of workers earning low wages (in the bottom quartile of the overall wage distribution) and high wages (in the top quartile of the overall wage distribution). Military is excluded as an occupation group, so share does not sum to 100