Weathering the crisis

This report describes the implementation and changing features of job retention schemes in the EU between 2020 and 2022. In response to the COVID-19 health emergency, EU governments swiftly deployed job retention schemes to preserve employment, support businesses and maintain individual incomes. The...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Adăscăliței, Dragoș, Weber, Tina, Vegetti, Federico, Christl, Michael, De Poli, Silvia, Ivaškaitė-Tamošiūnė, Viginta, Godino Pons, Alejandro|||0000-0002-0880-8739
Format: book
Publication Date:2024
Country:España
Institution:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repository:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:310818
Online Access:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/310818
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.2806/7896442
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Employment and labour markets
Employment status
Labour market policies
Pay and income
Covid
Description
Summary:This report describes the implementation and changing features of job retention schemes in the EU between 2020 and 2022. In response to the COVID-19 health emergency, EU governments swiftly deployed job retention schemes to preserve employment, support businesses and maintain individual incomes. The report shows that, following an initial period during which job retention schemes underwent numerous changes in their eligibility and conditionality criteria, the institutional features of job retention schemes stabilised as the pandemic progressed. Furthermore, the report demonstrates that a high degree of heterogeneity in the features of the schemes was maintained throughout the pandemic and its aftermath. While some of the schemes expired with the end of the pandemic, others were transformed into permanent institutions of the labour market. The report also analyses the employment and distributional effects of job retention schemes, highlighting their significant effects in terms of number of jobs saved and share of personal incomes maintained during the pandemic. An estimated 24.8 million jobs were saved in the EU in 2020 through the use of such schemes. Furthermore, the schemes absorbed more than one-third of the income shock produced by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and more than one-fifth of the income shock in 2021.