The Emergence of the Covid-19 Epidemic Led to Major Structural Changes

The Emergence of the Covid-19 Epidemic Led to Major Structural Changes
Abstract:
Unemployment is a social problem that affects social stability and economic development. The emergence of the Covid-19 epidemic led to major structural changes in the labor market worldwide. In the UK, Covid-19 resulted in a widespread unemployment rate nationwide. However, China's political and social conditions are different from those in the UK, such as China's much larger land area. Covid-19 caused the economy and geography to deteriorate in many provinces in China in 2020. Because the crisis led to different policies in these provinces, the unemployment rates in these regions varied. The study findings are consistent with literature findings in the UK, although different methods were used to measure and analyze the Covid-19 impact on China's unemployment rate. This paper will run a regression model and time series model to analyze how Covid-19 affected the unemployment rate in China at the province level in 2020. The control and dependent variables data were scraped from the Chinese government database. The data of Covid-19 was downloaded from Harvard University. After train-testing the model and visualizing the result, the study found that Covid-19 increased unemployment rates in the nationwide model. It caused unemployment in 22 provinces, while nine provinces had a decreasing unemployment rate in 2020. Covid-19 impacts were also divided geographically into two parts: West-Southern and East-Northern.
The study increases the current understanding of Covid-19 impacts on China because of the dearth of research at the provincial level in China. One limitation of the data sourced from the Chinese government is that the Chinese government sometimes posts fake data to keep social stability and avoid citizens' anxiety. The covid dataset was recorded at the provincial level and not at the community level. Consequently, the regression model was not entirely accurate owing to the relatively small selection of control variables. In sum, Covid-19 increased China's unemployment rate at the provincial level, but the impacts varied in different provinces.
Introduction
Covid-19, later renamed Coronavirus, gripped China since the beginning of 2020 (Qiu et al.). Wuhan in Hubei province was the first city to record covid19 cases in China. Covid-19 spread rapidly worldwide and brought an unignorable crisis in both economics and medical systems. By the end of November 2021, there were more than 63 million reported cases and 1.4 million deaths worldwide (Brodeur et al.). Because Covid-19 is a respiratory infectious disease, countries published several policies regarding social distance and quarantine to reduce Covid-19 infections. This contagious disease affected global economics and politics (Ceylan et al.). In China, the government enforced measures that locked down the cities with Covid-19 cases, thereby disrupting economic activities.
The cost of the Covid-19 was a burden to China's economy. The control measures to prevent the pandemic led to a 2.7% loss in China's annual gross domestic product. According to BBC News, from January 23, Wuhan was locked down for 72 days, which means that no one could exit or enter the city. Citizens in Wuhan could not get...