Publication: The Jobs Crisis : Household and Government Responses to the Great Recession in Eastern Europe and Central Asia
Date
2011-03-29
ISSN
Published
2011-03-29
Author(s)
World Bank
Abstract
The financial crisis swiftly expanded
into an economic crisis throughout America and Western
Europe, from where it spread to developing countries that
had depended on foreign direct investment, consumer and
mortgage credit, trade, and remittances. By early 2009, it
was clear that this economic downturn would be more severe
than any crisis since the great depression, prompting some
to it as the 'great recession.' Eastern European
and Central Asian countries were hit particularly hard
during 2009, global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contracted
for the first time since Second World War. The financial
crisis and the ensuing economic downturn, the worst since
the Great Depression in the 1930s, went hand in hand with
tightening of credit markets, bank failures, firm closures,
and high demand for social safety nets. This report, The
jobs crisis: household and Government responses to the great
recession in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, brings
together evidence that World Bank teams have collected on
the impact of the crisis on households and families in
Eastern Europe and Central Asia. This report shows how the
crisis was felt by Eastern European and Central Asian
households. Not only did unemployment rise sharply but it
also lasted longer. The report also shows that the pain of
the recession was broader, with workers taking home smaller
paychecks as firms offered lower wage rates and fewer hours
of work to their workers. The jobs crisis finds that
households used a variety of ways to cope with the crisis.
The jobs crisis presents an account of how governments
reacted to the crisis through social policy reforms and
initiatives and how such responses could be improved in the
future. Unemployment insurance benefits played a
particularly important cushioning role, but coverage of the
unemployed tended to be limited.
Citation
“World Bank. 2011. The Jobs Crisis : Household and
Government Responses to the Great Recession in Eastern
Europe and Central Asia. Directions in development ; human development. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/2287 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”