"Little is known so far about how the corona crisis has changed search processes in the labour market. We provide insights on labour market competition, reallocation of applications and potential sullying effects by analysing data from the LinkedIn professional network for Germany. We find that competition among workers for jobs strongly increased. The data allow us to trace that back to additional job seekers rather than higher search intensity. Furthermore, the LinkedIn data show that people from industries particularly affected by the crisis apply much more frequently and there has been a substantial shift in the target industries for applications. Finally, we find that during the crisis applications are made significantly more often below and significantly less often above a person's level of seniority.""

Support: Digital