企业如何应对育儿假缺勤?

How do firms adjust their labor demand when a female employee takes temporary leave after childbirth? Using Austrian administrative data, we compare firms with and without a birth event and exploit policy reforms that significantly altered leave durations. We find three main results. First, firms respond primarily through anticipatory hiring, while medium-run effects on total employment and the wage bill are small. Second, these adjustments differ sharply by gender: anticipatory replacement hiring is overwhelmingly female, but firms’ workforce composition shifts toward men in the medium run, driven by the shorter tenure of female new hires and higher retention of male incumbents. Third, while longer leave entitlements substantially extend actual leave absences, we do not find systematic differences in firms’ labor demand responses across leave regimes. Taken together, these findings show that firms accommodate parental leave mainly through anticipatory hiring and gendered changes in workforce composition, with limited medium-run changes in aggregate labor demand even when leave durations differ substantially.