COVID-19 and undeclared work: impacts and policy responses in Europe

Colin Williams and Ayşegül Kayaoğlu

The Service Industries Journal, 2020, vol. 40, issue 13-14, 914-931

Abstract: The Coronavirus pandemic has led to restrictions on movement and workplace closures, resulting in governments offering temporary financial support to enterprises and workers. This paper evaluates a group unable to access this financial support, namely those in the undeclared economy, and possible policy responses. To identify the service industries and workers involved, a late 2019 Eurobarometer survey of undeclared work in Europe is reported. This reveals that undeclared work is particularly prevalent in the hospitality, retail and personal services sectors and identifies the population groups over-represented. Given that this undeclared workforce is now largely unable to work, it will be argued that providing access to temporary financial support, through a voluntary disclosure initiative, would be a useful initiative not only to provide the income support these enterprises and workers need but also to bring them out of the shadows and put them on the radar of the state authorities.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02642069.2020.1757073 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:servic:v:40:y:2020:i:13-14:p:914-931

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FSIJ20

DOI: 10.1080/02642069.2020.1757073

Access Statistics for this article

The Service Industries Journal is currently edited by Eileen Bridges, Professor Domingo Ribeiro, Ronald Goldsmith, Barry Howcroft and Youjae Yi

More articles in The Service Industries Journal from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().