Softening the pandemic's blow to workers SIEPR policy brief Blundell, Jack, author. Bloom, Nicholas, author. Pistaferri, Luigi, author. Bell, Brian, author. Coronavirus Infections -- economics Economic Recession Employment -- economics Pandemics -- economics Key takeaways. (1) Recessions typically hit younger workers in smaller firms the hardest. (2) Policymakers should rapidly work to restore a sensible unemployment benefit level so that workers have the incentive to look for new jobs where available. (3) To cushion the impact on the young, policymakers should focus not only on helping young workers find jobs but also helping them find the "right" jobs. (4) Coming out of the crisis, government should explore how it can raise more taxes from older, richer workers. While not without issue, a well-designed wealth tax could be an appropriate response to the COVID-19 shock. Stanford, CA : Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), May 2020 Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, issuing body. Technical Report Text Illustrations 1 online resource (1 PDF file (6 pages)) nlm:nlmuid-101772296-pdf 101772296 http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/101772296 English United States Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY-NC-ND license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0