The labor market and poverty impacts of COVID-19 in South Africa

Ronak Jain, Joshua Budlender, Rocco Zizzamia and Ihsaan Bassier

No 2020-14, CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford

Abstract: We use newly-released South African data to present the first estimates of COVID-19-related employment and poverty impacts in a developing country. We observe a 40% decline in active employment. Half of this comprises job termina¬tions, suggesting persistent labor market effects. Initially vulnerable groups are disproportionately affected. Exploiting the dataset’s panel dimension and compar¬ing lockdown incomes of job losers to re-weighted job retainers, we estimate that 20-33% of job losers fall into poverty. Only 20% of those temporarily not working received the intended relief, while a third of job losers had no access to any major form of social protection.

Keywords: Labour markets; poverty; unemployment; COVID-19; social protection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H84 I32 I38 J21 J48 J63 J68 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The labour market and poverty impacts of COVID‐19 in South Africa (2023)
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