Teleworkers’ digital up-skilling: Evidence from the spring 2020 lockdown
研究了2020年春季封锁期间远程工作者数字技能提升情况，发现三成受访者感到技能提升，性别和年龄差距缩小但教育差距扩大，培训和使用工具数量与提升感相关。
During the spring 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, the proportion of employees who worked from home increased sharply, which increased the use of digital tools. In this context, we study how teleworkers improved their digital skills. More specifically, we ask whether the lockdown was an opportunity for teleworkers to increase their digital skills and whether some subgroups with traditionally lower digital skills (women, older workers, and less educated) have benefited from a catch-up effect. Using a sample of 438 employees working for firms located in Luxembourg, our empirical analysis shows, first, that three out of ten teleworkers felt that they improved their digital skills during the lockdown and, second, that the lockdown helped to reduce the gender and age digital skill gap but broaden the educational digital skill gap. Third, training and more frequent use of many digital tools during the lockdown are positively related to the digital upskilling feeling, but not for all subgroups of teleworkers studied. Finally, the feeling of digital upskilling is inverted U-shaped in the number of digital tools discovered during the lockdown, but not for all subgroups of teleworkers studied.