In this paper, we present evidence from the Current Population Survey examining the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on parental status and gender inequalities in employment in the United States. We show that the drop in the employment rate in post-outbreak months was largely driven by mass layoffs and not by workers quitting their jobs. Results from fixed-effects regression models show a strong fatherhood premium in the likelihood of being laid off for post-outbreak months compared to mothers, men without children, and women without children. We also found that the “fatherhood premium” was higher among lower-educated and mid-educated workers. These findings show that gaps in layoff rates exacerbated pre-existing forms of parental status and gender inequality in employment. Possible mechanisms are discussed, but more work is needed to explain why employers were less likely to lay off fathers following the outbreak, and the short- and long-term consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in reinforcing parental status and gender inequality in employment in the United States.

在本文中，我们提供了来自当前人口调查的证据，该证据检查了COVID-19危机对美国父母身份和就业中的性别不平等的影响。我们表明，疫情爆发后几个月的就业率下降主要是由于大规模裁员，而不是工人辞职。固定效应回归模型的结果表明，与母亲，没有孩子的男性和没有孩子的女性相比，在暴发后几个月被解雇的可能性更高。我们还发现，受教育程度较低和受过中等教育的工人的“父亲附加费”较高。这些发现表明，裁员率的差距加剧了父母身份和就业性别不平等的既有形式。讨论了可能的机制，