Last in After COVID-19: Employment Prospects of Youths during a Pandemic Recovery

Abstract

How is the evolving COVID crisis affecting workers’ employment outcomes? Using the ERF COVID-19 MENA Monitors for Egypt and Jordan (July ‘20–September ‘21), we estimate probabilistic models of workers’ employment statuses and of their job loss. We confirm that the stringency of COVID regimes affects negatively employment and labor participation, particularly among youths, even if they were not disadvantaged before. Workers’ preexisting status affects their outcome amid COVID, implying strong state dependence of employment. Those laid off amid COVID are predominantly those without formal employment before the pandemic. During the easing of COVID regimes between the fall of 2020 and mid-2021, men’s employment prospects gradually improved, but women experienced a stagnation by being largely excluded from work opportunities irrespective of COVID developments. Youths of both genders are affected more adversely than non-youths during the pandemic, face higher risks of getting laid off, and lower prospects of becoming employed—supporting the ‘last in’ hypothesis.

Keywords:

• Employment vulnerability
• youth
• COVID-19
• MENA region

JEL CODES:

• *J21
• J62
• N35

Notes

1 See for example AlAzzawi (2021) on the MENA region, as well as Delaporte and Peña (2020), Dingel and Nieman (2020), Hatayama et.al. (2020), Saltiel (2020), ILO (2020d) and references therein.

Additional information

Funding

This work was sponsored by the Economic Research Forum (ERF) and has benefited from both financial and intellectual support. The views expressed in this work are entirely those of the author(s) and should not be attributed to ERF, its Board of Trustees or donors. The authors are grateful to Ragui Assaad for providing constructive comments on earlier versions.