key: cord-0802502-8kktbmp2
authors: Kramer, Amit; Kramer, Karen Z.
title: The potential impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on occupational status, work from home, and occupational mobility
date: 2020-05-08
journal: J Vocat Behav
DOI: 10.1016/j.jvb.2020.103442
sha: 5ab6e99b76d1d54b0ec84dc7310e0782f2e8178f
doc_id: 802502
cord_uid: 8kktbmp2

The economic and social shock presented by the Covid-19 pandemic is likely to reshape perceptions of individuals and organizations about work and occupations and result in both micro and macro shifts in the world of work. In this essay we focus on three occupationally-related domains that may be impacted by the pandemic. First, perceptions of the value and status of different occupations may change, resulting in both changes of occupational supply and demand (macro changes) and changes in the perceived calling and meaningfulness of different occupations (micro changes). Second, the great “work from home experiment” may change occupational perspectives on working from home. Organizations and researchers may be able to better understand which occupational and individual characteristics are associated with work-from-home effectiveness and better designate occupational groups and individuals to working (or not working) from home. Third, we discuss the increased segmentation of the labor market which allocate workers to “good jobs” and “bad jobs” and the contribution of occupational segmentation to inequality.

J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f 3 Economic shocks have a profound impact on the way people live and work, organizations operate, and industries and societies conduct themselves. Previous economic shocks tended to cover a narrow group of workers, occupations, or industries. For example, the 2000 dot.com bubble burst had a significant negative impact on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) occupations but a minor negative impact on occupations in other sectors of the economy. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, however, is widespread and may result in not only the temporal disappearance of some occupations and a dramatic growth in other occupations, but also in changes in the status of some occupations and their value proposition. In this essay we focus on the implications of the pandemic for (a) the values embedded in occupations and the status associated with occupations and the association this might have with new occupational perceptions of meaningful work and calling; (b) the manner in which organizations perceive work from home arrangements within a given occupational group and between different occupations; and, (c) change in occupational segmentation and its relationship to gender, racial, and ethnic inequality.

Occupations have different statuses associated with them. An occupational status, a key measure of socioeconomic status, is traditionally defined as the power privilege, and prestige that are associated with a specific occupation (Lin, Ensel, & Vaughn, 1981) . A broader definition of occupational status also includes the level institutional social recognition an occupation receives (Zhou, 2007) . As such, occupational status can be affected by societal changes and more specifically, by changes in what is being perceived by society and individuals as -more important work‖ versus -less important work‖. Occupational status is important because occupations with higher status tend to attract more employees, even when the monetary rewards Journal Pre-proof J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f 4 they offer are not high (e.g., teachers, Ashiedu & Scott-Ladd, 2012) . While in many cases occupations with higher status are those that require higher education, institutional social recognition entails that the status of an occupation is also associated with serving desired societal values (Zhou, 2007) . For example, Nam and Boyd's (2004) occupational status scale gives an identical occupational status score to police officers and archivists even though the educational demands for archivists are considerably higher (a bachelor's degree). In turn, an archivist's median salary in 2018 was $48,400 while a police officer median salary was $63,380 (BLS, 2020a, b) . While many other factors might affect the status of an occupation and the median compensation, for example, occupational gender composition (e.g., Macpherson & Hirsch, 1995) and supply and demand of workers (e.g., Katz & Murphy, 1992) , this example clearly demonstrates the association between the social recognition an occupation receives and the status of the occupation. 

One of the most observable changes which occurred as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the shift of many employees to work from home arrangements across occupations.

Individuals from some occupational groups that had very little experience with working from home were shifted to such arrangements (e.g., teachers in primary education) while individuals across occupation who preferred not to work from home, were now forced into such working arrangements. At the same time, some individuals in certain occupations experienced a less forceful change. Certain occupational groups have a significant experience with work from home arrangements (e.g., translators) and individuals across occupational groups had already have a significant experience working from home.

J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f 6 from home) and are actually well-suited to working from home? Such occupational resistance to working from home might be a result of traditionalism, lack of trust, the gender and generational composition of the occupational group, as well as a lack of interest and desire, at the occupational level, to invest in the infrastructure required to work from home. However, once working from home became a necessity, will some occupational groups find it to be better than they have expected?

A second important question concerns the interaction between the worker and type of occupation. Specifically, are some individuals, in some occupations, better suited to work from home? Given a specific occupational group, what determines the distribution of productivity within an occupational group? Answers to these questions can have a profound impact in identifying which different occupational groups will structure their work arrangements. For some occupations, it may be that the nature of the work itself determines the level of productivity workers are able to achieve from home. In essence, individual preferences, personality, and behaviors will have little impact on their level of productivity when working from homeoccupational characteristics will trump individual characteristics and preferences. For other occupations, the opposite might be true. Individuals within a given occupation will show a significant variation in their productivity when performing very similar tasks. In other words,

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