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Impact of COVID-19 on Employment during the First Year of the Pandemic in Indonesia

Aris Ananta, Universitas Indonesia
Evi N. Arifin, Universiti Brunei Darussalam

As COVID-19 has been with us for more than a year, more data sets are available to asses the impact of the COVID-19 on people’s life, including employment condition. This paper attempts to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 on employment in Indonesia, using various sources of data sets, mostly collected and published by Statistics-Indonesia. It uses results from several non-probabilitic surveys during the pandemic, which asked how the respondents evaluated their conditions, before and during the first year of pandemic. The surveys include those on firm performance and behaviour. Reports from big data are also utilized. Furthermore, results of probabilistic national employment surveys are used to compare employment condition in February 2020 (one month before the start of the pandemic), August 2020 and February 2021. The national employment surveys also include self-reported evaluation on the impact of the pandemic on respondents’ employment. It should be noted that the daily infection has reached its peak at about 14,000 daily infection by the end of 2021. Since then the number has been fluctuating at around 5,000 daily (at least until middle of May 2021). The tentative results of this on-going study is mixed of pessimism and optimism.

Keywords: COVID-19, Human capital and labour markets

See extended abstract.

  Presented in Session P1.