Economic shocks and skill acquisition: Evidence from a national online learning platform at the onset of COVID-19
利用沙特阿拉伯大型政府在线学习平台数据，研究新冠疫情冲击如何影响个人技能选择，发现年长工人转向远程工作课程，年轻工人则增加新技能课程，且早期技能投资有助于维持就业。
We study how large shocks impact individuals’ skilling decisions using data from a large, government-sponsored, online learning platform in Saudi Arabia. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic brought about a massive increase in online skilling, and demand shifted towards courses that offered skills, such as telework, likely to be immediately valuable during the pandemic. Consistent with a model where individuals trade off reskilling costs with their expectations of future labor market conditions and their duration of work, we find that shifts into telework courses were largest for older workers. In contrast, younger workers increased enrollments in courses related to new skills, such as general, occupation-specific, and computer-related skills. Using national administrative employment data, we provide descriptive evidence that these investments in skills in early 2020 helped users maintain employment over the course of the pandemic.