Early Labor Market Impacts of COVID-19 in Developing Countries

Melanie Khamis, Daniel Prinz (), David Newhouse, Amparo Palacios-Lopez, Utz Pape and Michael Weber

No 32769257, Jobs Group Papers, Notes, and Guides from The World Bank

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Poverty and Equity; labor market impact; income loss; jobs and development; payment for work; country income group; loss of income; Learning and Innovation Credit; demand for labor; labor force work; loss of employment; labor market condition; development cooperation; payment of wage; survey data; high share; aggregate indicator; critical data; human capital; physical infrastructure; simple average; agricultural worker; high frequency; partial payment; economic crisis; firm survey; joint product; reduced work; job changing; household worker; collected data; wage income; wide swath; macroeconomic projection; informal arrangement; photo credit; representative sample; economic slowdown; peace building; wage worker; first wave; sampling frame; new information; production process (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 60
Date: 2021-01-22
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/60728161 ... Developing-Countries

Related works:
Working Paper: The Early Labor Market Impacts of COVID-19 in Developing Countries (2021)
Working Paper: Early Labor Market Impacts of COVID-19 in Developing Countries (2021)
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