Publication: Early Labor Market Impacts of COVID-19 in Developing Countries
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2021-01-22
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2021-01-22
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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.
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“Khamis, Melanie; Prinz, Daniel; Newhouse, David; Palacios-Lopez, Amparo; Pape, Utz; Weber, Michael. 2021. Early Labor Market Impacts of COVID-19 in Developing Countries. Jobs Watch COVID-19;. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35047 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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Publication The Early Labor Market Impacts of COVID-19 in Developing Countries(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-01)The economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has sharply reduced mobility and economic activity, disrupting the lives of people around the globe. This paper presents estimates on the early impact of the crisis on labor markets in 39 countries based on high-frequency phone survey data collected between April and July 2020. Workers in these countries experienced severe labor market disruptions following the COVID-19 outbreak. Based on simple averages across countries, 34 percent of the 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. Stopping work was more prevalent in the industrial and service sectors than in agriculture. Measures of work stoppage and income loss in the high-frequency phone survey are generally consistent with gross domestic product growth projections in Latin America and the Caribbean but not in Sub-Saharan Africa. This suggests that the survey data contribute new and important information on economic impacts in low-income countries.Publication The Early Labor Market Impacts of COVID-19 in Developing Countries(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-01)The economic crisis caused by the Coronavirus (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 thirty-nine 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 Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. Thirty-four percent of respondents reported stopping work, twenty percent of wage workers reported lack of payment for work performed, nine percent reported job changes due to the pandemic, and sixty-two percent reported income loss in their household. Measures of work stoppage and income loss in the HFPS are generally consistent with gross domestic products (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 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 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. 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