Employed Australians lost an average of 167 hours of work from March to October because of COVID-19 which cost the economy $47 billion in lost productivity, new data from the Australian National University shows.
The longitudinal survey of 3000 people also revealed anxiety and worry levels continued to climb between May and October with women and young people reporting the highest levels of psychological distress.
The survey data showed that men lost an average of 95 hours of work compared to an average loss of 38.5 hours for women.
People who had finished year 12 but not completed a university degree lost more working hours than those with a lower or higher level of education.
Study co-lead Professor Nicholas Biddle said the trends suggested professionals were able to move to working from home more easily than other types of workers.
"There are certain types of occupations which are much more amenable to adapting to working from home," Professor Biddle said.
"Someone from the construction industry can't work from home."
Workers born overseas in a non-English speaking country lost a substantially larger number of work hours (104) than their Australian-born counterparts.
Older Australians also lost more hours of work, which Professor Biddle said was a cause for concern as older people usually struggled to reenter the workforce.
The researchers found the loss in production per employed Australians was worth $5885 between February and October, or $2379 per adult if non-employed workers are included.
Survey respondents were asked if they felt hopeless, restless and fidgety, if they felt like everything was an effort and if they were so sad that nothing could cheer them up.
Victorians were at least 30 per cent more likely than the general population to report they felt these signs of psychological distress in the last weeks.
"Even though we have a relatively small sample of the rest of Victoria versus Melbourne, there is some evidence that the impacts are particularly felt in Melbourne where lockdown measures are greatest and infection rates are higher," Professor Biddle said.
The research showed that for 18 to 24-year-olds psychological distress was 21.3 per cent worse in October 2020 than before the pandemic in February 2017 and potentially even higher than it was between April and August 2020.
"The data is strongly suggesting the restrictions on social interaction had a much larger effect on younger Australians than older Australians," Professor Biddle said.
He said this could suggest younger people rely more on social interactions outside of their household while the middle part of the age distribution had more social interactions within their own household.
