High workloads do not automatically force bureaucrats to discriminate in service delivery. It suggest that the relation is much more complex than suggested by existing evidence and that context plays a crucial role.

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Various robustness checks support the main finding. Particularly notable, I track clients’ participation rate in activation programs, such as internships and skill development training and find no effect of the workload increase.

I use micro-level register data on bureaucrat-client interactions on the full population of unemployed people.
Surprisingly, immigrants of non-Western descent receive the same amount of meetings as the Danish ethnic majority throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, just as they had before.

I also exploit that the lockdown caused an asymmetrical development in unemployment across municipalities due to differences in industry composition.

Empirically, I investigate how bureaucrats at Danish unemployment agencies reacted to a 20% workload increase associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark in 2020. I exploit that the lockdown was unexpected and triggered a steep and sudden increase in unemployment from one day to the next.