Miscellaneous Knowledge Notes
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Publication
Exploring Two Years of Labor Market Policy Responses to COVID‑19: A Global Effort to Protect Workers and Jobs
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-01)To mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, countries have responded with an unprecedented number of social protection and jobs interventions. This brief is based on the COVID-19 social protection and jobs policy inventory and provides information on over 3,400 labor market policies in the inventory launched or announced between January 2020 and January 2022. -
Publication
How Did the COVID-19 Crisis Affect Different Types of Workers in the Developing World?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-08)The COVID-19 pandemic is the worst global macroeconomic shock since the Great Depression. This brief reports which groups of workers have been hit hardest by the economic fallout of COVID-19 in developing countries. Larger shares of female, young, less educated, and urban workers stopped working, with gender differences being particularly pronounced. Gender gaps in work stoppage stemmed mainly from differences within sectors rather than differential employment patterns across sectors. Among those that remained employed, changes in sector of employment and employment type were similar for all groups except for age, where young workers saw a slightly larger decline in industrial employment. Employment increased between April and October, with larger gains for the groups with larger initial job losses, but for most groups these gains fell far short of pre pandemic employment levels. Finally, evidence from five countries suggests that phone surveys give a generally accurate picture of group disparities in employment rates following the onset of the crisis and are proving to be a valuable tool for monitoring differential impacts of the crisis on workers -
Publication
The Evolving Labor Market Impacts of COVID-19 in Developing Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-07-22)The early labor market impacts of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic resulted in widespread disruption to livelihoods. Previous analysis showed that between April and July 2020, across a sample of 39 countries, an average of 34 percent of workers stopped work, 20 percent of employees experienced partial or no payments for work performed, and 9 percent changed jobs during the early part of the pandemic. This brief discusses how labor markets have evolved since the initial phase of the crisis in the spring and early summer of 2020. It uses harmonized data from high-frequency phone surveys (HFPS) conducted in 33 developing countries and provides information on the changing labor market impacts of the crisis in these countries from the initial phase of the pandemic in April 2020 through December 2020. -
Publication
Building Capacity to Evaluate Value Chain Development for Job Creation: A Case Study from Tunisia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06-30)Value Chain Development (VCD) approaches, and building country capacity to adopt them, represent important operational tools to help World Bank client countries harness private sector potential and remove job creation constraints to create more and better jobs, especially for youth, women, and other vulnerable groups. The WBG-coordinated pilot ‘Value Chain Development for Jobs in Lagging Regions, ‘Let’s Work’ Program in Tunisia’ targets pilot value chains that could provide job opportunities for poor or vulnerable groups in lagging regions. The project tests new tools to help inform VCD policies: (a) Cluster and value chain reinforcement initiatives (CRIs), and (b) Value chain and job focused surveys. A ‘VCD Training’, the central capacity building element of the of the Let’s Work program in Tunisia, aimed to build public administration capacity to analyze value chains and support private sector development, job creation, and competitiveness, with a focus on lagging regions. The World Bank designed and delivered the VCD Training in Tunis from April 5, 2016 to November 14, 2016. The eight VCs used for training purposes in the program all link to key WBG financed operations in Tunisia. Two of these value chains, olive oil and medicinal and aromatic plants, were also subjects of subsequent jobs surveys. The VCD Training built strong capacity for VCD analysis in Tunisia. The training helped establish an inter-ministerial ‘Taskforce’ and VCD ‘Platform.’ Overall, 27 civil servants received training, among whom 11 were evaluated as ‘ready to conduct value chain analysis and development work’ by the end of the training program; six of these worked as core members of the Government VCD Taskforce. The VCD capacity development has informed ongoing WBG-financed operations in Tunisia and has been used to train subsequent generations of recruits since the end of the project. All VCs analyzed show high potential for growth, which could lead to more and better jobs in the olive oil, the medicinal and aromatic plants, and tomato sectors. -
Publication
Taking Stock of COVID-19 Labor Policy Responses in Developing Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-03-23)This Jobs Watch brief provides an analysis of labor market and social protection responses to the COVID-19 crisis, with a focus on policies targeted to workers and firms. It includes a comprehensive set of labor market interventions, using data from the global COVID-19 SPJ Policy Inventory. The analysis can inform governments of approaches that can be taken when introducing or adapting their crisis mitigation measures. To our knowledge, this is the first summary of labor market policies adopted by developing countries in response to the COVID-19 crisis. -
Publication
Early Labor Market Impacts of COVID-19 in Developing Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-01-22)The economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic sharply reduced mobility and economic activity, disrupting the lives of people around the globe. This brief presents estimates on the crisis’ impact on labor markets in 39 countries based on high-frequency phone survey (HFPS) data collected between April and July 2020. Workers in these countries experienced severe labor market disruptions following the COVID-19 outbreak. 34 percent of respondents reported stopping work, 20 percent of wage workers reported lack of payment for work performed, 9 percent reported job changes due to the pandemic, and 62 percent reported income loss in their household. Measures of work stoppage and income loss in the HFPS are generally consistent with GDP growth projections in Latin America and the Caribbean but not in Sub-Saharan Africa, indicating that the phone survey data contributes valuable new information about the impacts of the crisis. Ensuring availability of such critical data in the future will require investments into statistical and physical infrastructure as well as human capital to set up Emergency Observatories, which can rapidly deploy phone surveys to inform decision makers. -
Publication
The Labor Market Impacts of COVID-19 in Four African Countries (April to October 2020): Evidence from LSMS-Supported High‑Frequency Phone Surveys on COVID-19
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-10)As part of a global effort led by the World Bank to track the socio-economic impacts of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the living standards measurement study (LSMS) team supports high-frequency phone surveys in Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, and Uganda (among other countries). This brief focuses on the early impacts of COVID-19 on the labor market and their evolution from April to October 2020 using phone surveys in four African countries.