Through a cohort study, this investigation examined the association between sociodemographic factors and subsequent unemployment during COVID-19. Under the pandemic of COVID-190, we found that unemployment was associated with sociodemographic factors such as age, sex, marriage, income, education and occupation.
We observed that the risk of unemployment was highest among young people. International Labour Organization (ILO) has reported that worldwide, young people were subjected to the greatest loss of labor opportunities through COVID-19: in 2020, young workers suffered 8.7% job losses compared with 3.7% for adults [13]. The present study conducted in Japan similarly found that young people were more than twice as likely to be unemployed as middle-aged and older workers. This could have been due to the fact that the accommodation and service industry as well as the food and beverage industry (which were most affected by COVID-19) had more young casual workers than other industries [5, 14]. In addition, even before the pandemic, there was a high turnover rate of young people in Japan. The turnover rate within 3 years of graduating from university and entering the workforce was around 30% in 2021 [15]. This is thought to be due to their transition from school to work and still looking for the right job.
By industry and occupation, we found the unemployment rate to be higher among temporary and contract workers, agricultural and forestry workers, and manual laborers. Japan’s Labour Force Survey reported that the number of non-regular workers in the country fell sharply under COVID-19 [5]. Many temporary and contract workers were employed in lifestyle-related industries, travel and entertainment services, which were heavily affected by the pandemic [16, 17]. Temporary and contract workers are thought to be used to adjust employment and our results clearly confirm this.
We observed a high unemployment rate in the agriculture, forestry, and fisheries sector. The reasons for the high unemployment rate in agriculture are unclear: agriculture is an employment sector that is less susceptible than others to economic fluctuations. One possibility is that the economic downturn in the food service and food industry caused by COVID-19 had an impact on agricultural production [16]. Another explanation for the finding in agriculture, forestry, and fisheries could that it was reflecting a trend for casual work in Japan: temporary employment during the farming season is common, and over 80% of temporary workers have short-term contracts of under 1 month [18, 19]. A further factor could be that the number of farmers in Japan has been declining annually since before COVID-19, and the high unemployment we found in agriculture may not have been due solely to the pandemic [20].
We found that women were more likely to be unemployed than men: the OECD has stated that women are also more vulnerable in society [8]. Japan’s Labour Force Survey during COVID-19 observed a gender difference in the decline in the number of people in employment: women were more likely to be unemployed [5]. The 2021 survey reported that 68% of people in informal employment were women; many of them worked in the accommodation, catering, and lifestyle-related service industries [5]. In the present study, we found that 14.7% of women (compared with 7.4% of men) were in informal employment.
The unemployment rate was also significantly higher for divorced or bereaved people than with dual-earner households. In economic terms, marriage is held to be a rational behavior that seeks economic gain [21, 22]. It has long been pointed out that low-income earners and those with unstable employment are less likely to get married [23, 24]. The unmarried participants with their precarious employment situation may became unemployed owing to the pandemic. Also, if the divorced or bereaved had a child, it is possible that they were forced to leave the workplace due to school or after-school care leave, because school closures by the pandemic [25].
With regard to income and education, we observed that the lower the income and lower the education, the greater was the likelihood of unemployment. It is widely known that such socially vulnerable groups are at higher risk of unemployment [7, 9, 26]; we found a similar trend during COVID-19. The impact of unemployment on the lives of those with lower incomes is accordingly greater, and they constitute the group in highest need of social support.
Overall, COVID-19 appears to have increased difficulties for a previously vulnerable group. Previous studies have shown that people of lower socio-economic status are more likely to face difficulties in the event of a pandemic. However, much of the research has focused on the higher risk of contracting infectious diseases and, as a result, being more likely to face problems such as healthcare costs and unemployment [7, 27-30]. Our findings suggest that in the event of a major epidemic, resulting in unemployment among vulnerable segments of the labour market, regardless of whether workers themselves are infected. Thus, there is a need for employment and financial support for socially vulnerable groups in the event of a major epidemic.
There are several limitations of this study. First, it was unclear why the participants had experienced unemployment: we did not know whether it was due to the effects of COVID-19, company bankruptcy or financial difficulties, or the participants’ voluntary decision to change jobs. Second, this study was conducted as an Internet survey; thus, the generalizability of our results is unclear. It is possible that individuals who were genuinely penurious did not have Internet access and could not participate in the survey. If such people had taken part in the survey, the bias would have been stronger. We attempted to reduce subject bias as much as possible by sampling by region and occupation based on infection rates. Third, of the 27,036 individuals who participated in the baseline survey, 7095 did not respond to the follow-up survey (non-participation rate, 26%). That may have led to further bias.