Rory Renzy

Date of Award

2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Reilly, Jack

Area of Concentration

Political Science and Economics

Abstract

Work-sharing programs allow firms to reduce their workers' hours on the payroll during times of economic crisis, with pro-rated unemployment insurance benefits making up much of the lost compensation. Considering that such policies are favored by both liberals and conservatives, but are not utilized uniformly across the United States, does work-sharing noticeably "work?" I use federally-accumulated U.S. labor market data to assess whether or not work-sharing programs helped to curb unemployment during the 2020 calendar year and the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. While past literature focuses on how work-sharing is effective in maintaining jobs relative to standard unemployment insurance, I find that at their current scale of usage, American work-sharing programs do not have a statistically or substantively significant impact on overall unemployment levels. However, past academic literature and policy work suggests scaling up such programs would be greatly beneficial to altering unemployment insurnance for the better. Additionally, through descriptive investigation of states with work-sharing programs, I find that there are no clear reasons behind relative work-sharing success, regarding topics like advertising breadth and balanced budget requirements. Lastly, I discuss the ability of work-sharing to alter American norms around working hours during all economic times, such as in the future for union action and federal labor policies.

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