Shifting employment and perceptions of household responsibilities during early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in Nevada, USA.

Background: Employment and household responsibility are critical health determinants. The COVID-19 pandemic altered the work and social landscapes in Nevada, USA through closures of workplaces and schools/childcare centers, changing patterns of employment, and household responsibilities. This study aimed to measure changes in employment status and perceived housework responsibilities among Nevada adults in December 2020, before widespread availability of COVID-19 vaccines in a pandemic-affected economy.
Methods: Using a cross-sectional telephone survey of 1,000 Nevada adults, this study compared respondent experiences and perceptions of employment and time spent on housework in December 2020 to pre-pandemic using multinominal logistic, proportional odds, and logistic models.
Results: 70.52% of participants experienced no employment change; roughly 24% reported being fired/laid-off, working reduced hours, or quitting. Chi-square analyses found participants of color more likely than Whites to report being fired/laid-off or working reduced hours (p-value = 0.0005), though these findings were not significant in our models. Participants in the lowest income bracket had higher odds of being fired/laid off (p-value = 0.0030), and participants aged 65+ were less likely to experience employment change (p-value<0.0001). 32.43% of participants reported more time spent on housework. Multivariate analyses showed age is significantly associated with changes in both employment status (p-value<0.0001) and housework time (p-value<0.0001); income is a significant factor for employment status change (p-value = 0.0024). Of those reporting their households spent more time on housework, females were 2.90 times (95% CI = 1.66, 5.05, p-value = 0.0002) more likely to report taking on the additional work.
Conclusions: Results demonstrate a disproportionate burden in employment change and/or more perceived household responsibilities on lower income and younger respondents, and females reporting they are more likely to take on additional housework. Understanding systemic vulnerabilities related to employment status and household responsibilities is necessary to aid impacted communities and to plan for future emergencies.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
(Copyright: © 2024 Coughenour et al. 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.)