The impact of COVID-19 on employment expectations in the China's service sector-evidence from online surveys of 1222 education enterprises

This paper uses data from 1,222 online survey questionnaires of education enterprises to estimate the impact of COVID-19 on the employment expectations of service enterprises. We found COVID-19 had a significant inhibitory effect on employment expectations, and if the shock of COVID-19 increased by one level, the probability that the expected labour demand of enterprises decreased by 30-50% would increase by 0.049 compared to the same prior-year period, and the probability of a reduction of more than 50% would increase by 0.115. The COVID-19 influenced employment expectations mainly through inhibiting two major channels - revenue and cash flow, and its impact on revenue was greater than the impact on cash flow. Specifically, the mediating effects of revenue and cash flow accounted for 42.78% and 14.07% of the total effect, respectively. In addition, the employment expectations of non-micro enterprises, offline enterprises, and enterprises in high-risk regions were more impacted by COVID-19.