In the Eye of the Storm: the Disrupted Career Paths of Young People in the Wake of COVID-19

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Using a survey representative of individuals who left the educational system in France at any level in 2017, we examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on young people’s probability of being employed between the start of lockdown in March 2020 and July 2020. We find that the COVID-19 pandemic had a strong impact on youth employment. Our results show that young people’s probability of being employed decreased by as much as 3~\% during the lockdown period relative to the pre-pandemic baseline. This impact is smaller than that observed in other countries, probably due to the significant measures implemented in France. Our heterogeneity analyses indicate that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on young people’s labor market integration varied with the type of employment contract, area of study, and, to a lesser extent, having a working-class parent, a foreign-born parent, or residing in a rural area.