THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ECONOMIC COSTS IN TERMS OF LABOUR FORCE LOSS

Abstract

Within the broader context of the economic costs of the recent pandemic, we calculate excess deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic for the whole population and split them into age subgroups. Furthermore, we estimate the cost of the labor force lost due to the pandemic. We employ a generalized additive model to set up a counterfactual time series of weekly deaths to estimate the number of deaths if the pandemic had not occurred. Subtracting the counterfactual series from the actual number of fatalities provides the excess deaths. The number of excess deaths in the whole population is not statistically different from the COVID-19 fatalities reported by the Ministry of Health. However, we find excess deaths that are substantially higher than the reported COVID-19 fatalities in the age group from 35 to 59 years. We estimate the costs of the lost labor force to be approximately 0.03% of the Czech GDP in 2021.

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Received: 16 Aug 2022
Revised: 7 Oct 2022
Accepted: 10 Nov 2022
Published: 24 Nov 2022