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Loss, Recovery and the Long Road Ahead: Tracking India's Informal Workers Through the Pandemic
Drawing on results from a panel of 2778 workers interviewed during and after the 68-day hard lockdown imposed in India, the following study examines the livelihood impact of the pandemic and the extent of subsequent recovery or lack thereof. Focussing specifically on workers located in the informal...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Springer India
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9984124/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37124125 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s41027-022-00418-1 |
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author | Nath, Paaritosh Mandela, S. Nelson Gawali, Aishwarya |
author_facet | Nath, Paaritosh Mandela, S. Nelson Gawali, Aishwarya |
author_sort | Nath, Paaritosh |
collection | PubMed |
description | Drawing on results from a panel of 2778 workers interviewed during and after the 68-day hard lockdown imposed in India, the following study examines the livelihood impact of the pandemic and the extent of subsequent recovery or lack thereof. Focussing specifically on workers located in the informal economy, the study is a useful addition to the burgeoning body of work on the economic impacts of Covid-19 by providing an insight into the employment and earnings recovery of those located at the margins. These findings are spliced across socio-economic groups to showcase the differential impact of the pandemic on different demographics within the informal sector. Our results show that six months after the hard lockdown, one out five persons were still out of work. Conditioned on being employed prior to the lockdown and having lost work during the lockdown, we find that urban respondents, women, workers above 60 and graduates were significantly less likely to recover from the shock. A similar exercise carried out for women workers showed that middle aged women, never married women and women who were not-literate or educated up until primary and middle school were significantly more likely to recover from job loss. Older women, those located in urban areas and Muslim women were on the other hand significantly less likely to recover from the job loss. Earnings on the whole were half of what they used to be prior to the pandemic. Some better off workers shifted to more precarious types of employment. Given the fall in earnings, poorer worker households were forced to borrow and the amount of loan taken was multiple times their average monthly income. In the context of loss in employment and reverse migration, the survey results show a substantial unmet demand for work under the MGNREGA programme even after the lockdown was lifted. We conclude that despite a partial recovery in the subsequent period, the pandemic-induced lockdown has undermined the material conditions for subsistence for a large segment within the informal economy. Moreover, any attempts made to re-imagine what a social protection programme for the informal economy should look like must take into account the segments most susceptible to an economic shock on their livelihoods. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9984124 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Springer India |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-99841242023-03-03 Loss, Recovery and the Long Road Ahead: Tracking India's Informal Workers Through the Pandemic Nath, Paaritosh Mandela, S. Nelson Gawali, Aishwarya Indian J Labour Econ Article Drawing on results from a panel of 2778 workers interviewed during and after the 68-day hard lockdown imposed in India, the following study examines the livelihood impact of the pandemic and the extent of subsequent recovery or lack thereof. Focussing specifically on workers located in the informal economy, the study is a useful addition to the burgeoning body of work on the economic impacts of Covid-19 by providing an insight into the employment and earnings recovery of those located at the margins. These findings are spliced across socio-economic groups to showcase the differential impact of the pandemic on different demographics within the informal sector. Our results show that six months after the hard lockdown, one out five persons were still out of work. Conditioned on being employed prior to the lockdown and having lost work during the lockdown, we find that urban respondents, women, workers above 60 and graduates were significantly less likely to recover from the shock. A similar exercise carried out for women workers showed that middle aged women, never married women and women who were not-literate or educated up until primary and middle school were significantly more likely to recover from job loss. Older women, those located in urban areas and Muslim women were on the other hand significantly less likely to recover from the job loss. Earnings on the whole were half of what they used to be prior to the pandemic. Some better off workers shifted to more precarious types of employment. Given the fall in earnings, poorer worker households were forced to borrow and the amount of loan taken was multiple times their average monthly income. In the context of loss in employment and reverse migration, the survey results show a substantial unmet demand for work under the MGNREGA programme even after the lockdown was lifted. We conclude that despite a partial recovery in the subsequent period, the pandemic-induced lockdown has undermined the material conditions for subsistence for a large segment within the informal economy. Moreover, any attempts made to re-imagine what a social protection programme for the informal economy should look like must take into account the segments most susceptible to an economic shock on their livelihoods. Springer India 2023-03-03 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC9984124/ /pubmed/37124125 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s41027-022-00418-1 Text en © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Indian Society of Labour Economics 2023, Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law. This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic. |
spellingShingle | Article Nath, Paaritosh Mandela, S. Nelson Gawali, Aishwarya Loss, Recovery and the Long Road Ahead: Tracking India's Informal Workers Through the Pandemic |
title | Loss, Recovery and the Long Road Ahead: Tracking India's Informal Workers Through the Pandemic |
title_full | Loss, Recovery and the Long Road Ahead: Tracking India's Informal Workers Through the Pandemic |
title_fullStr | Loss, Recovery and the Long Road Ahead: Tracking India's Informal Workers Through the Pandemic |
title_full_unstemmed | Loss, Recovery and the Long Road Ahead: Tracking India's Informal Workers Through the Pandemic |
title_short | Loss, Recovery and the Long Road Ahead: Tracking India's Informal Workers Through the Pandemic |
title_sort | loss, recovery and the long road ahead: tracking india's informal workers through the pandemic |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9984124/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37124125 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s41027-022-00418-1 |
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