The Impacts of COVID-19 on Informal Labor Markets : Evidence from Peru
This paper provides new evidence on the impacts of the COVID-19 economic crisis on a labor market with a high prevalence of informality. The analysis uses a rich longitudinal household survey for Peru that contains a host of individual and job outc...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/614731621951519340/The-Impacts-of-COVID-19-on-Informal-Labor-Markets-Evidence-from-Peru http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35636 |
| Summary: | This paper provides new evidence on the
impacts of the COVID-19 economic crisis on a labor market
with a high prevalence of informality. The analysis uses a
rich longitudinal household survey for Peru that contains a
host of individual and job outcomes before and during the
first months of the lockdown in 2020. The findings show that
workers who had jobs in non-essential and informal sectors
were significantly more likely to become unemployed. In
contrast to developed countries, having a job amenable to
working from home is not correlated with job loss when
controlling for informal status. This is consistent with the
high level of labor market segmentation observed in Peru,
where high-skilled occupations are disproportionately
concentrated in the formal sector, which was also better
targeted by policies aimed at supporting firms and job
protection during the crisis. In addition, the findings show
that women were more likely to lose their jobs because
female-dominated sectors are more intensive in face-to-face
interactions and thereby more affected by social distancing
measures. Increased childcare responsibilities also help
explain the worse impacts on women in rural areas. Finally,
workers who depended on public transportation before the
crisis were more likely to lose their jobs during the early
months of the pandemic. |
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