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      Perceptions of pandemic resume gaps: Survey experimental evidence from the United States

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          Abstract

          As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of people found themselves out of work in 2020 and 2021. Going forward, will their pandemic resume gaps be stigmatized or forgiven? In a recent survey experiment in the United States, I find that US adults have negative perceptions of individuals who were unemployed during the novel coronavirus pandemic. When asked to select among fictional applicants for a job opening in the hospitality industry, respondents prefer those who were employed continuously throughout the pandemic. Respondents are about 20% less likely to choose applicants with pandemic resume gaps, regardless of whether they were laid off, stopped working to supervise virtual school, or yo-yoed in and out of employment. Respondents also describe applicants with pandemic resume gaps in more negative terms, perceiving them as less hardworking, less dedicated, less professional, and less qualified than otherwise identical applicants who remained employed. Public opinion toward individuals with breaks in employment during the pandemic matters because it may affect public policy, and because stigma harms job seekers in multiple ways. Furthermore, the results of the experiment are consistent among survey respondents with hiring and managerial experience. While we should always be cautious about generalizing from survey experiments, these findings suggest that people who were out of work during the COVID-19 pandemic may face disadvantages when they return to the labor market.

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: Funding acquisitionRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS One
                plos
                PLOS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                16 March 2023
                2023
                16 March 2023
                : 18
                : 3
                : e0281449
                Affiliations
                [001] Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
                University of Milano–Bicocca: Universita degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, ITALY
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist.

                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6966-5770
                Article
                PONE-D-22-16366
                10.1371/journal.pone.0281449
                10019729
                36928893
                b4c2e4af-2a52-4757-93c7-ce7b89fb154b
                © 2023 Regina Bateson

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 6 June 2022
                : 23 January 2023
                Page count
                Figures: 8, Tables: 2, Pages: 15
                Funding
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100005385, American Political Science Association;
                Award Recipient :
                This study was funded by a small grant from (no grant number) from the Women, Gender, and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association, https://connect.apsanet.org/s16/. RB received the grant. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Medicine and Health Sciences
                Epidemiology
                Pandemics
                Social Sciences
                Economics
                Labor Economics
                Employment
                Social Sciences
                Economics
                Labor Economics
                Employment
                Jobs
                Medicine and Health Sciences
                Medical Conditions
                Infectious Diseases
                Viral Diseases
                Covid 19
                Research and Analysis Methods
                Research Design
                Survey Research
                Surveys
                Social Sciences
                Sociology
                Education
                Schools
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Psychology
                Psychological Attitudes
                Social Sciences
                Psychology
                Psychological Attitudes
                Social Sciences
                Economics
                Labor Economics
                Salaries
                Custom metadata
                All data and replication files are publicly available from the Open Science Framework ( https://osf.io/pqkbu/).
                COVID-19

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                Uncategorized

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