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When the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic seriously hit the USA, a lot of cities/states announced their lockdowns, in some cases forbidding employees to go to work. But workers in the so called “essential sectors” were exempt from the order, and on the contrary were required to remain on the job in order to maintain the services and functions considered vital to the community. If they have not been paid well in comparison to those in the other sectors, there would be a stronger case for granting them a special hazard pay during the pandemic. This paper aims to design a way to measure the “importance” or being “essential” of the different sectors in the economy, and then investigates whether the actual pay of the workers in these sectors is consistent with the measured importance.

At least two policy issues emerged from such an arrangement: (1) How can one define the “essential sectors” objectively instead of the authorities preparing a list according to their administrative procedure? (2) How well have been the workers in the essential sectors paid before the pandemic strike? The concept of a revised Leontief forward linkage effect will be used in an input–output model to gauge the relative “importance” of the different sectors in the US economy. Then the measured importance will be compared with the average compensation of the employees in these sectors.

It is found that for some sectors such as agriculture, retail trade, and repair and installation of machinery and equipment the ratio of workers' compensation relative to the national average is substantially lower than the relative importance of the sectors employing them. That is, many of them have been substantially underpaid in spite of their importance.

The scope of this study is limited to one country, the USA, but the methodology can be applied to other countries as well.

This study is an original research that contributes to an improved understanding of the importance of the workers engaged in different sectors in the USA during COVID-19.

Traditionally, international monetary economists focus their attention on the framework of either a pure fixed or a pure flexible exchange rate system. With the demise of the Bretton Woods system, many countries have begun to use an intervention policy in the foreign exchange market and adopted the regime of managed floating exchange rates. Such a change has encouraged many economists into the field of this system. Although the contributions in this area are very rich, there is no systematic analysis concerning whether intervention policy will enhance or weaken the effectiveness of macroeconomic policies. That is why this article is written.