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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) Kamran, Mareeha; Mujica, Ingrid; Fonteñez, María Belén; Newhouse, David; Rodriguez-Alas, Claudia; Weber, Michael
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.
The Evolving Labor Market Impacts of COVID-19 in Developing Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-07-22) Khamis, Melanie; Prinz, Daniel; Newhouse, David; Palacios-Lopez, Amparo; Pape, Utz; Weber, Michael
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.
Taking Stock of COVID-19 Labor Policy Responses in Developing Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-03-23) De La Flor, Luciana; Mujica, Ingrid; Fontenez, Maria Belen; Newhouse, David; Rodriguez Alas, Claudia; Sabharwal, Gayatri; Weber, Michael
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.
Early Labor Market Impacts of COVID-19 in Developing Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-01-22) Khamis, Melanie; Prinz, Daniel; Newhouse, David; Palacios-Lopez, Amparo; Pape, Utz; Weber, Michael
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.
Structural Transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-02) Deudibe, Gildas; Merfeld, Joshua; Ndoutamou, Justin; Newhouse, David
Economic development is typically accompanied by the movement of labor from agriculture to the non-agricultural sector, a pattern commonly referred to as structural transformation. This note aims to better understand the ongoing structural transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa. It finds that: (i) the structural transformation is occurring more slowly, and is much less variable across countries, than prevailing estimates suggest; (ii) there is a weak relationship between initial agricultural employment shares and the pace of transformation, suggesting little convergence across regions; and (iii) movement out of agricultural employment is clearly but only modestly correlated with poverty reduction.