2022, Vol. 7, Issue 4, Part C

The COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the threat of future pandemics, has transformed the focus of automation technology, compelling many businesses to adapt to remote working to increase productivity. The sole objective of this paper is to evaluate the COVID-19 effect on the risk of automation-related occupations, remote work, or labor productivity in Canada. Johansen cointegration test was adopted and it reveals a long-term connection between COVID-19, automation, remote working and labor productivity in Canada which suggest that the vector error correction model should be applied. Meanwhile, the Granger causality test was employed and the result shows that remote working has a positive causal relationship with labor productivity, automation has a negative causal relationship with labor productivity, automation has a negative causal relationship with remote working, COVID-19 has a positive causal relationship with labor productivity, and COVID-19 has a positive causal relationship with remote working. The vector autoregressive model (VAR) was also applied and the result shows that there is a short-run link between COVID-19, automation, remote working and labor productivity. Consequently, we can deduce that there is both short and long run connection among the confirmed cases of COVID-19, automation, remote working and labor productivity in Canada while Granger causality demonstrates that COVID-19 occurrences in Canada have a causal effect on the risk of automation-related professions, distant work, and labor productivity, demonstrating the study's value.