Assessing Pandemic-Related Risks and Resilience of Danish Workforce: A Methodological Approach

The restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic brought repercussions for the employees. Most of the workplaces had to temporarily lockdown as a preventive measure to the virus spread. Those individuals who were able to continue working remotely faced a lower risk of job loss compared to those persons who could not. The main question, however, revolves around assessing risks and identifying resilient workers during these restrictive phases of the pandemic.

In this article, we propose a new Work-From-Home (WFH) index designed to assess individuals' likelihood of working from home. Utilizing quarterly Labour Force Survey data on the actual extent of remote work among Danish workers from 2008 to 2021, this new index can be employed in any dataset with access to the International Standard Classification of Occupation codes. A comparative analysis is conducted with the commonly applied indexes – the Home Office Index (HOI) and Lockdown Index (LDI) suggested by Faber et al. (2020) and Dingel and Neiman (2020). Our findings reveal that the WFH index offers greater variations by occupations, accounting for diverse outcomes of remote work across different economic sectors.

Using Pooled OLS models, the study examines factors influencing resilience and lockdown risks, considering demographics, socioeconomic status, residential location, and industry-related aspects. The results highlight the WFH index's accuracy in measuring remote work possibilities, providing a better-fitted model than in the case of HOI. The findings indicate that notably, male workers in middle to top-level positions, particularly in publicly-owned workplaces, exhibit positive outcomes in remote working and lower lockdown risks. This article not only contributes to future research on labour force resilience but also provides supplementary material for easy application to study labour market changes even in cases with limited data in other countries.