COVID-19: How India fared during lockdown (Financial Express)

Financial Express (India) published an op-ed by research analyst Ruchira Boss, senior research fellow Devesh Roy, senior research analyst Sunil Saroj & Mamata Pradhan. The authors state that possibly even more than a public health crisis, Covid-19 is an economic crisis manifested most severely in the labor market. In the face of the pandemic, the structure of the labor market typifies the extreme vulnerability of workers in India. The recently released quarterly bulletin report of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), April-June 2020, offers an opportunity to revisit employment questions related to Covid-19. Comparing year-on-year 2020 with 2019, and quarter-on-quarter within 2020, a truer picture of the labor market’s effects emerges. This article highlights the 10 distinctive findings on the Covid-19’s impact on the urban labor market.