The labour market and poverty impacts of covid-19 in South Africa: An update with NIDS-CRAM Wave 2

Ronak Jain, Ihsaan Bassier, Joshua Budlender and Rocco Zizzamia
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Ihsaan Bassier: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Joshua Budlender: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Rocco Zizzamia: University of Oxford

No 272, SALDRU Working Papers from Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town

Abstract: We use Wave 2 of NIDS-CRAM data to provide an update to our original estimates (Jain et al., 2020) of COVID-19-related employment and poverty impacts in South Africa. Compared to the most stringent phase of South Africa's lockdown in April, we find evidence of a limited recovery in the labour market, a decrease in poverty, and an important role for the new Social Relief of Distress grant by June. While temporary unemployment almost returned to February levels, we find that active employment was still 20% lower in June than February, mostly due to job terminations that persisted into June.

Keywords: Labor 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
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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