新型冠狀病毒(Coronavirus Disease 2019，COVID-19)於2020年重創全球，對全世界的經濟、健康與生活造成前所未有的影響，澳洲和加拿大的勞動市場亦受到新冠疫情的嚴重衝擊。
本研究透過反事實分析法(Counterfactual analysis)，探討新冠疫情對澳洲與加拿大失業率的影響，使用兩國官方公布的2010年到2022年失業率月資料，採疫情爆發(2020年2月)前的資料建立ARIMA時間序列模型(Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average model)，並對疫情爆發後的期間進行失業率預測，藉此建立假設不存在新冠疫情的反事實情況，並與新冠疫情導致的真實失業率狀況進行差異比較。再而，採用偏差校正的最小平方虛擬變數法(Bias-corrected least squares dummy variable，LSDVC)，衡量疫情發生率、疫情死亡率、政府管制嚴格程度對兩國各行政區失業率的影響。
研究發現:新冠疫情使兩國的失業率攀升，疫情初期澳洲和加拿大失業率分別上升1.38%和4.68%，隨著新冠疫苗的施打，疫情的負面影響減緩。年輕族群受疫情的影響相對嚴重，可能原因為:年輕族群大多受雇於餐飲、旅遊、零售、住宿服務等行業，此類行業較容易受疫情衝擊。再而，政府管制措施越嚴格將導致越高的失業率，疫情死亡率的增加導致加拿大失業率上升的負面影響；然而，疫情發生率、疫情死亡率並未對澳洲失業率產生顯著影響。

To investigate the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on the unemployment rates, this study uses counterfactual analysis and the bias-corrected least squares dummy variable model (LSDVC) to estimate changes in the unemployment rates over the COVID-19 pandemic period from 2020 to 2022 in Australia and Canada. Estimation results indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic increased the unemployment rates, especially in the group aged from 15 to 24 years. In addition, strict domestic and border restrictions lead to increases in the unemployment rates.

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