Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/299322 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Series/Report no.: 
Treasury Working Paper No. 2023-04
Publisher: 
The Australian Government, The Treasury, Canberra
Abstract: 
We estimate the employment effects of the first 6 months of the JobKeeper program over the following year, which includes the height of the COVID-19 recession in Australia and subsequent rapid recovery. The design of the program allows us to use a fuzzy regression discontinuity design - comparing workers just either side of start date thresholds for eligibility - to credibly identify the effects of the program on employment. At the height of the recession, JobKeeper lifted the probability of employment for casual workers by around 40 percentage points, an effect that fell away to zero as health restrictions were lifted and aggregate employment rebounded. Smaller but more enduring effects are found for newly recruited permanent workers, suggesting the program may have played a more important role in ameliorating labour market scarring for these workers in the medium term. Finally, we rule out large within-firm 'spillover' effects that may have supported or suppressed the employment of ineligible workers, as firm-level estimates of the effect of JobKeeper on employment closely mirror individual-level estimates. Our findings suggest that at its height in early 2020 JobKeeper directly preserved between 300,000 to 700,000 jobs.
Subjects: 
JobKeeper
wage subsidy
job retention scheme
COVID-19
JEL: 
H20
J08
J20
ISBN: 
978-1-925832-84-6
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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