Evaluate the impact of a crisis, such as the global Covid-19 pandemic, on the current trends in the job market.

Evaluate the impact of a crisis, such as the global Covid-19 pandemic, on the current trends in the job market.

During the initial weeks and months of the COVID-19 crisis, G20 countries moved rapidly to provide unprecedented levels of emergency support to keep households and companies afloat, protect jobs and incomes and prevent the economy from collapsing. In the coming months, as the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic subsides and G20 countries increasingly turn to re-opening their economies, policymakers will need to maintain this agility, modifying and adjusting the composition and characteristics of support packages, targeting support where it is needed most, and encouraging a return to work where possible. While doing that, it will be important to start on the task of building back better to address the deep-rooted labour market fragilities and structural inequalities that the pandemic has exposed. Alongside efforts to address the health emergency brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, countries across the G20 have adopted a vast range of emergency measures aimed at supporting firms’ liquidity in the face of mandatory business restrictions, quarantines and plummeting activity. Among these measures, government-financed short time work and wage subsidy schemes, have been adopted in a number of G20 countries to minimise job losses. These schemes, which allow firms experiencing a temporary lull in business, to receive support for a share of the wages of employees working reduced hours, appear to have averted a massive initial surge in unemployment in these countries. The expansion of the coverage and level of sickness benefits and paid sick and care leave in many countries also played an important role protecting the jobs, incomes and health of workers. In spite of governments’ bold efforts to support firms and protect jobs through job retention schemes, millions of workers across the G20 have lost their jobs. Meanwhile, many self-employed workers saw their incomes collapse. Therefore, the majority of G20 countries took immediate steps to improve the accessibility to, and generosity of, unemployment minimum-income benefits. Alongside these efforts, several countries introduced new cash transfers targeted at those who remained without cover, supported expenses or, in a number of cases, introduced universal transfers to ensure no one fell through the cracks. Providers of private and public employment services (PES) have been placed under a severe stress test as demand for their services sky-rocketed in the first few months of the crisis while their capacity was severely constrained by the need to curtail face-to-face contact with job seekers. Governments responded by simplifying procedures for claiming benefits and ramping up the digitalisation of services such as registering for job search assistance and applying for benefits. Opportunities for online learning were also increased. The economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have not fallen with equal severity on all shoulders. Existing vulnerabilities have been exposed, and inequalities entrenched. Many of those with more limited means and protection, such as workers in informal employment or in diverse work arrangements, have been the least able to face the consequences of the crisis. Job and income losses have been particularly severe for women. Many women still working have been on the frontline in providing essential services while risking exposure to the coronavirus. Moreover, the increased burden of unpaid care brought by the crisis has particularly affected women. This raises the risk that the progress many G20 countries have made on gender equality over past decades may be put on hold or even reversed. In addition, the COVID-19 has been a sombre reminder of the higher risk of violence and harassment facing women during times of crisis.Youth have been hit hard by school closures and the closing down of entry-level jobs in the labour market as well as internships and apprenticeships. High and persistent youth unemployment and underemployment in the aftermath of the global financial crisis showed that once young people have lost touch with the labour market or become marginalised in informal and precarious jobs, re-connecting them with good jobs can be very hard with potentially long-lasting scarring effects. As the pandemic is causing massive damage to the informal economy, the situation for young and women workers in this vulnerable sector is even more worrisome.

The COVID-19 health crisis has turned into a global economic crisis, putting at risk the health, jobs and incomes of millions of people around the world. The strict containment measures adopted by many countries first half of 2020 to flatten the rise in contagion put a substantial brake on most economic and social activities. The collapse in total hours worked, and the decline in participation, have not been seen in peacetime since the Great Depression. There are signs that the trough of the sharp and deep global economic recession has been reached in many G20 economies. However, ensuring that the recovery is rapid and sustained, and rebuilding a more resilient and inclusive labour market, remain considerable challenges. At their Summit on 26 March 2020, G20 Leaders committed to do whatever is needed to overcome this pandemic and its consequences on economies and societies, and, in particular, to spare no effort to safeguard people’s jobs and incomes. As part of this commitment, the G20 Leaders asked the ILO and OECD to monitor the pandemic’s impact on employment. This note responds to this request. Section 1 provides a brief overview of the key facts concerning the spread of the pandemic and the impact that measures to contain its spread have had on the G20 economies. Section 2 focuses on the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on employment, paying specific attention to the groups most vulnerable to job and income losses. Section 3 discusses the employment and social policy responses in G20 countries to support jobs and incomes. Key policy considerations concerning exit strategies from confinement and containment measures are discussed in Section 4. The report concludes in Section 5 with policy suggestions for building back better by helping labour markets become safer, fairer and more sustainable and resilient.

In many countries, these falls in employment and hours of work have not been fully translated into increased unemployment as recorded in national labour force surveys. While the unemployment rate increased substantially in Canada and the United States, and by considerably more than during the Global Financial Crisis (Figure 6, Panel A), it was still less than what would have been expected given the falls in employment. For example, in the United States, employment fell by 22.4 million (seasonally adjusted) between March and April whereas unemployment rose by a lower number of 15.9 million. In other countries, the rise in unemployment was much more muted or absent (partly due to a large decline in participation, see below). These country differences partly reflect differences in the treatment of workers on temporary layoffs as unemployed in Canada and the United States but as employed elsewhere. They also reflect each country’s policy mix to cushion the economic and social effects of the crisis (see Section 3). Many countries, in particular in the European Union, made heavy use of job retention schemes to prevent people from becoming unemployed in the first place. The rise in unemployment was also dampened by people out of work temporarily suspending active job search or their availability to work when national and local lockdowns were in place. According to standard labour force definitions, these people are classified as inactive and therefore not part of the labour force. Consequently, in all G20 countries where monthly data are available, with the exception of the United Kingdom, participation rates declined substantially (Figure 6, Panel B). For many of these people, there was little point seeking work during a period of lockdown or they were unavailable to take up paid work because of additional household duties linked to confinement such as childcare and homeschooling of children. While some decline in the participation rate has also been a feature of previous recessions as people become discouraged from active job search, the extent of the decline during the COVID-19 was exceptional in most countries. If people are unable to return to work quickly, this could lead to permanent discouragement for some workers.As economic activity picks up, many people in this pool of potential job seekers will re-enter the labour market. These inflows of people back into the labour force means that bringing unemployment down may take time despite any rebound in employment. Indeed, in Canada and the United States, the unemployment rate in July was still well above its pre-crisis level. According to the OECD’s projections of June 2020, unemployment rates in most G20 countries where these data are available will still be much higher at the end of 2021 than at the end of 2019.

As the coronavirus spread around the world and workplaces closed, millions of workers lost part or all of their incomes. Even if still working, many workers had to accept shorter hours and/or wage cuts in different industries such as airlines, retail and accommodation, food services, or the textile and garment sectors, which are highly feminized sectors. In some instances, wage cuts were negotiated in collective agreements between workers and employers. For example, in Argentina, a collective agreement included a 25% cut in the wages of workers in shutdown sectors for 60 days as of April 1, 2020, with a view to saving jobs. Among workers who still had a paid job in early April, 35% in the US, 30% in the UK and 20% in Germany reported lower earnings in March compared to earlier months.5 Various countries also implemented wage cuts in the public sector.6 In some countries where they are available, labour statistics point to falling wages. In Australia, nominal average wages of workers aged 50 to 59 years old declined by 3.2% between the week ending March 14, 2020 and the week ending June 13, 2020. 7 In the UK, real average wages declined by 1.2% in April, after also declining in March 2020. In the U.S. by contrast, there was an unprecedented real wage jump of 5.8% in April 2020, followed by a smaller real growth of 0.5% in May 2020.8 However, this reflects a compositional effect of greater job loss among low-paid workers than high-paid workers which raises the average of the earnings of workers still in jobs. When restricting the analysis to workers employed in consecutive periods, one study finds that in March, April and May 2020, wage freezes and wage cuts were much more common than during the same months in 2019.9 In Canada, there was also an exceptional acceleration in real wage growth reflecting greater job loss for low-paid workers, rising by 6.8% in April 2020, following a substantial increase in unemployment from 8% in March to 13.4% in April.

Low-paid, often low-skilled, workers were particularly affected during the initial phase of the crisis. Many of the so-called “frontline workers”, who put their health at risk, exposing themselves to the virus to ensure the continuation of essential services during lockdowns, work in sectors characterised by relatively low wages. This includes health and care workers (apart from doctors), but also cashiers, production and food processing workers, janitors and maintenance workers, agricultural workers, delivery workers and truck drivers. Outside the essential services, low earners are more likely to be working in sectors affected by shutdowns and are more likely to have suffered job or earnings loss. In the United Kingdom, for example, the bottom ten per cent of employees in terms of their weekly earnings were about seven times as likely to work in shutdown sectors as the top ten per cent of earners. In Canada, employment losses among low-wage employees, between February and April 2020, were more than twice as high as the losses among all paid employees. Evidence based on real-time surveys from a number of countries suggests that, in April, the top 25 per cent of earners were, on average, 50% more likely to work from home than the bottom 25 per cent. At the same time, low-income workers are twice as likely to have stopped working completely. Workers in diverse forms of employment that differ from full-time wage and salary work with a permanent contract – such as self-employed workers, those on temporary, on-call or part-time contracts and informal economy workers – have been highly exposed to the job and income losses prompted by the pandemic. In the United Kingdom, for example, 75% of the self-employed report having experienced a drop in earnings in the previous week, compared to less than 25% of salaried workers. This exposure stems partially from the sectoral concentration of workers in diverse working arrangements, for example, in accommodation and food services, arts, entertainment and recreation, and other personal services and in part from their lower coverage in social protection schemes. And evidence from EU countries suggests that such jobs may represent up to 40% of total employment in sectors most affected by containment measures. Meanwhile, workers on fixed-term contracts have been among the first to lose their job during the crisis as contracts that came to an end were not renewed. In France, for example, the increase in new unemployment claims in March and April 2020 was almost entirely driven by temporary agency workers and workers in temporary jobs whose contracts were not renewed. Similarly, in Italy, the decrease in the number of jobs between the end of February and the end of April compared to the same period in 2019 was largely driven by reduced hiring on fixed-term contracts, despite efforts to temporarily lessen existing regulation on the use of such types of contract. The same pattern was also seen in Spain.

The impact of the crisis has been particularly severe for informal economy workers, for whom staying home means losing their jobs and their livelihoods. According to ILO estimates, in 2020, 1.2 billion workers in G20 economies are in informal employment ‒ representing 55% of total employment (20% in G20 developed economies and 67% in G20 emerging economies). 11 Of these workers, it is estimated that 850 million (70 per cent) are likely to have been heavily impacted by the COVID-19 crisis, leading to an estimated decline in their earnings of 61% (34% in G20 developed economies and 76% in G20 emerging economies). Moreover, relative poverty (defined as the proportion of workers with monthly earnings that fall below 50 per cent of the median earnings in the population) is projected to increase steeply for informal workers and their families by almost 36 percentage points in G20 economies (over 50 percentage points in developed G20 economies and 29 percentage points in emerging G20 economies). 12 There are two main reasons why such a high proportion of informal workers is affected by lockdown measures. The first reason is sectoral: the sectors in which informal economy workers are largely represented are also the hardest hit. For example, heavily impacted sectors (at risk sectors) include the wholesale/retail trade sector and the manufacturing sector, which account for 22% and 21% of informal non-agricultural employment in G20 countries, respectively (Figure 7). The second reason for the strong impact on informal workers has to do with size of economic units. The majority of the workers at risk in the informal economy work as own-account workers and in small firms of less than 10 workers, which are more vulnerable to shocks. Workers, including business owners in microbusinesses of less than 10 workers, represent close to 70 per cent of total informal employment across G20 countries. To protect workers who could not work from home, countries often restricted business operations to “essential” services or implemented comprehensive occupational safety and health (OSH) standards. Countries issued stricter sanitary guidelines that ranged from requiring the use of partitioning walls and personal protective equipment (PPE), such as masks, gloves and other protective clothing, to restricting the maximum number of workers allowed to be physically present on companies’ premises. These measures were more challenging to implement in the informal economy where work activities commonly take place in overcrowded areas, such as public spaces, with limited access to hand-washing stations and to PPE. In addition, informal economy workers and enterprises are not registered which makes it difficult to identify them and to reach out with information on OSH measures. Consequently, it is essential to tailor existing policy interventions by considering the specific constraints most informal economy enterprises and workers face, such as a low level of information and low access to health services; using appropriate communication channels such as radio to disseminate information; cooperating with memberbased organisations and adopting innovative mechanisms for greater outreach. According to Eurofound, 32 specific national OSH policy measures within 16 EU countries have been implemented in response to the COVID pandemic, to date. Of these, 13 policies have focused on general occupational safety and health principles, 12 relate to teleworking arrangements, 5 relate to changes in working arrangements, and 2 specifically focus on the well-being of workers. In Italy, for example, the government, employers’ associations and trade unions jointly signed a protocol on OSH measures in the early phases of the crisis and subsequently renewed and updated this protocol. Germany has implemented strict regulations in the meat industry, after a series of COVID19 outbreaks in slaughterhouses. In France, the Ministry of Labour and construction employers' organizations negotiated a guide that defines protocols for health and safety in the construction sector while supporting business continuity. In Spain, the national OSH institute published updated guides for those sectors that continued operating, including guidance on the use of personal protection equipment. In countries like the USA, South Africa and South Korea, national OSH authorities recommended the use of engineering controls, administrative controls, safe work practices and PPE. Employers are also advised to continuously assess and manage occupational risks according to the evolving situation. In Russia, to prevent violations of labour rights of employees, a f public control mechanism has been launched on the portal "Online inspection Russian Federation" (employees have the opportunity to get advice on compliance with labour laws, as well as to send an appeal in case of violation of labour rights and poor working conditions). It is also essential to provide accessible information on workplace safety and health measures for vulnerable groups of population such as migrant and refugee workers, making it available in a language they can understand, including in informal economic units. ILO is supporting Migrant Worker Resource Centres and partners in some countries to provide relevant information to migrant workers and their communities on a wide range of issues, including assistance on COVID-19 related issues, legal assistance to migrant workers suffering labour rights violations, trainings and materials on health and safety, including masks and hand sanitizers. The Danish Refugee Council in partnership with the Danish Health Department is providing COVID-19 related information in 25 languages in Denmark. However, paid sick leave can only be an effective tool during the containment, mitigation and postconfinement periods if it is widely available to large parts of the labour force. This was by no means the case in all countries prior to the crisis. Many workers, especially those in diverse forms of employment, particularly informal economy workers and the self-employed, were unprotected or insufficiently protected by collectively financed sickness benefits. In addition to constituting important poverty risks, such gaps in protection threaten public health, since workers who lack income security during sickness may be compelled to work when sick, thereby possibly contaminating others. Consequently, many G20 countries substantially expanded or even initiated sick leave policies in response to the pandemic. In Korea, where there is no mandatory scheme in place, the 2015 Epidemic Act extended paid sick leave to workers who are hospitalised or quarantined because of COVID-19. The United States introduced two weeks of mandatory sick pay for workers with COVID-19-related symptoms for companies with less than 500 employees – the sick pay being paid by employers but fully reimbursed by the federal government. Several countries increased paid sick-leave entitlements for people with COVID 19, often through the introduction of new pandemic-related payments or top-ups, including France, Australia18 and Spain. Other countries (e.g. France and the United Kingdom) temporarily abolished existing waiting periods. Several countries (e.g. Russia) also eased reporting requirements, by delaying or waiving the need for medical certification or by allowing online benefit applications. In Russia, it was established by the Federal law that the amount of temporary disability benefits for periods of disability from April 1 to December 31, 2020 (inclusive) cannot be lower than the minimum wage. Some G20 countries have put in place stop-gap measures to expand coverage to uncovered categories of workers. In the United Kingdom, sickness benefits have been extended to all workers, including gig economy workers, who are in selfisolation.19 Japan has provided cash sickness benefits to persons who took leave due to subjective symptoms but could not see a doctor. In this case, a certificate of work incapacity from the employer can be a substitute for a medical certificate. In the course of this pandemic, several countries also temporarily expanded access to sickness benefits for self-employed workers who are sick with COVID-19 or quarantined (e.g. France, Australia, Canada, Korea, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States). Some countries have also taken measures to ensure that national social protection schemes are extended to migrant workers. For instance, to ensure migrants have access to public services, Portugal has adopted provisions to treat them as permanent residents during the pandemic (ILO, 2020[9]). Some governments have used other measures to ensure income security for those affected by COVID19, such as providing crisis payments or short-time work benefits for both sick and quarantined employees (e.g. Australia, Canada, France, and the United States). In Argentina, a generalized one-off cash benefit was paid through the existing channels of the agency in charge of providing family benefits, including for domestic workers in both formal and informal employment. In addition, various countries provided hardship funds or other payments to self-employed workers (see below). In almost all cases, however, measures are time-bound and limited to COVID-19 cases only. Despite these measures, sickness benefits in some countries only cover a small fraction of the previous wage or are shorter than the recommended period of self-isolation for people with COVID-19 symptoms. Providing an adequate income replacement in the case of sickness is key to protect people.

The COVID 19 crisis has increased the demands on many workers to provide family care. During the pandemic, with school and day care closures, reductions in public services for people with disabilities and the elderly, and the non-availability of domestic workers, the hours devoted to care work for many women, as well as men, have increased. Working full hours is often very difficult, if not impossible, under such circumstances, notably for single parents and couples where only one partner can telework. Parents with younger children, who require closer attention, report particular difficulties balancing work and family (Eurofound, 2020[10]). Couples where both parents have to be physically present at their workplace faced an even greater challenge unless child care facilities were provided. To reduce the pressure on working parents, many G20 countries have extended the duration of extended special paid leave (incl. parental leave) or provided financial means to pay for care services. This includes Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan20, Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States. In most of these countries, the right to special paid leave or income support lasts for a fixed number of days or weeks, ranging from 10 days (per parent) in Korea to up to 12 weeks in the United States and four months in Canada. However, in some (e.g. France), it extends for as long as schools and child care facilities are closed. In several countries, workers taking special leave receive either a flat-rate payment (e.g. Canada, Korea) or a fixed part of their salary (e.g. France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States). Since continued payment of salaries is likely to be difficult for many employers, most countries have minimised employer contributions or funded special leave entirely through general taxation or social insurance. Some countries have also extended special paid care leave (or income support) to self-employed workers (e.g. Canada, France, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom). However, the financial compensation they receive is often lower. Some countries provided subsidies to compensate companies that introduced family leave (e.g. Japan), and made available loans to freelance workers who need to stay home due to school closures. Measures have also been taken specifically to address the care needs of essential service workers, many of whom are women. For example, France, Germany and Russia have allowed some childcare facilities to remain open, with reduced staff, to ensure the children of essential service workers can be looked after. Similar policies have been introduced by Korea, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. In Australia, child care services remaining open for children of essential workers and vulnerable children were entitled to additional Government funding.The COVID-19 pandemic is particularly affecting those who were already facing discrimination, stigma and exclusion prior to the pandemic. Many groups are over-represented in the informal economy, including people with disabilities, indigenous and tribal peoples, people living with HIV, forcibly displaced people and migrant workers. These are not isolated categories but often intersect with each other, as well as with gender, socio-economic status, age and other factors, resulting in multiple layers of discrimination, stigma and exclusion in access to employment, social protection and health services. Protecting workers and ensuring their rights has become challenging, particularly for those in the informal economy, who already lacked adequate social and labour protection before the crisis. Hence, many individuals in these groups are being disproportionately affected and at risk to be left even further behind in the recovery phase. Furthermore, rising levels of discrimination, xenophobia, and homophobic attacks, and dramatic spikes in violence and harassment have been a feature of the COVID-19 pandemic.Targeted measures have included for example ensuring public health, education and workplace communication on COVID-19 is accessible to persons with disabilities, including through the use of sign language, made available in the languages accessible to migrant workers and displaced people, and is culturally appropriate and takes into account cultural practices of indigenous peoples. They have also addressed specific health needs, including coverage of additional health care expenses for people with disabilities and people living with HIV that have arisen from the pandemic. Some countries have facilitated access to benefits for people with disabilities, including relaxed administrative requirements, and continued care and support (e.g. Argentina, France, Turkey and Saudi Arabia). They have also advanced the payment of old age and disability benefits and/or increased their level to reduce the risk of poverty (e.g. Argentina and Turkey). Spain introduced a minimum-income scheme as a permanent structural instrument especially designed to protect the most disadvantaged. Job retention schemes (JRS) have been one of the main policy tools in many advanced G20 countries to contain mass layoffs and protect incomes. They seek to preserve jobs at firms by temporarily reducing firms’ labour costs – which often account for a large part of firms’ operating costs, notably in the service sector that was particularly badly affected by the crisis – while providing income support to the workers concerned. They also provide a substantial complement to liquidity support measures for companies who face temporary credit constraints. They can take various forms: They can directly subsidise hours not worked, in the form of short-time work (STW) or temporary layoff schemes (e.g. the German Kurzarbeit, the French Activité partielle, the Italian Cassa Integrazione or the Spanish ERTEs) (see (OECD, forthcoming[11]), and (Müller and Schulten, 2020[12]) for a more in-depth discussion of the main features of existing and new job retention schemes, as well as (ILO, 2020[13]). They can also subsidise hours worked, or similarly, top-up overall earnings of workers on reduced hours (e.g. the Job Keeper Payment in Australia). Schemes differ widely in their level of support for firms and workers and the requirements that they impose for eligibility for participation (e.g. economic need, force majeure, agreement by social partners, restrictions on economic dismissals). Several G20 economies had pre-existing short-time work schemes, which they rapidly adjusted to cope with the COVID-19 crisis. Among the G20 countries, several countries such as Brazil, France, Germany Italy, Spain and Turkey had job-retention schemes in place. Countries’ measures to expand existing STW schemes fall into three broad categories: i) simplifying access and extending coverage to boost take-up among the affected firms; ii) extending coverage to non-permanent workers, often including temporary,temporary-agency and even certain categories of self-employed workers; and iii) raising the level of support by increasing income replacement rates for workers and reducing the costs for firms. In addition, a number of countries introduced new job retention schemes that combine elements of STW schemes with elements of standard wage subsidies. Australia and Canada are among the G20 countries that have opted for introducing temporary wage subsidy schemes. While wage subsidy schemes tend to be easier to implement and provide more flexibility to firms than traditional short-time work schemes, they also tend to be less well targeted at firms experiencing financial difficulties. However, in countries with relatively low costs of layoff, participation in a STW scheme would not necessarily be very attractive for firms, whereas participation in wage subsidy schemes tends to come at a relatively low cost to employers. In several G20 countries, take up of the new or extended job retention schemes has been massive (Figure 12). In May 2020, companies’ requests for support from job retention schemes covered 55% of dependent employees in France, over 40% in Italy, and around 30% in the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia. The actual use of these schemes is considerably lower than the initial requests in some countries. In Germany, for example, actual take-up was 19% in May, and in France actual take-up was 33%. The substantial uptake of these instruments partly explains why Australia and many European countries did not experience the massive surge in unemployment recorded in Canada and the United States.

Countries undertook measures to help public employment services deal with soaring benefit claims, and adapt to physical-distancing requirements. The unprecedented rise in jobseekers seeking to register for unemployment benefits as well as massive use of job retention schemes at the onset of the crisis posed an enormous challenge to public bodies administering these schemes. Many countries had to build rapidly the necessary infrastructure and procedures to administer the large number of new claims. To ensure a timely processing and payment of benefit claims, several countries simplified and streamlined claim procedures (Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom). This also included some countries who managed soaring new claims by shifting rapidly to online platforms (Spain, the United Kingdom). Many countries also changed procedures for existing benefit claims during the confinement period. This took several forms: First, some countries allowed for automatic renewal of benefits without requiring the regular renewal procedures (e.g. Spain). Second, countries also eased job-search and reporting requirements for existing beneficiaries during the crisis (e.g. France and Germany). Third, countries temporarily did not apply or even lifted existing sanctions for jobseekers that did not comply with regulations (e.g. Australia29 and Italy). Other countries reallocated staff by prioritising claim processing over non-essential services (e.g. Germany). In order to free up human resources, many countries scaled down and suspended some services such as inperson training or job fairs in the short term. These adaptions to the ways of supporting jobseekers were often necessary because of physical-distancing requirements and the difficulties they faced in looking for work during the pandemic. Nevertheless, reaching out to vulnerable groups to provide support and job search assistance remains a considerable challenge when face-to-face contact is not possible. While most public employment services had to suspend in-person job-search support and training to respect physical distancing, some shifted to offer services online. Given the standstill of large parts of the economy, the crisis also represented an opportunity and accelerated the need for upskilling and reskilling of the labour force, in particular to bridge the gap in digital skills that the crisis highlighted. This applies equally to (new) jobseekers as well as to workers who are temporarily suspended or work only reduced hours. In some countries, pre-existing online training solutions allowed training provision to be maintained with minimal investment, at least for the type of skills that can be easily taught online (e.g. in certain regions of Italy and in some other European countries such as Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, the Netherlands). Other countries managed to expand online training options quickly by changing labour regulations or allocating additional funding to strengthen distance learning and internet-based education (e.g. France). This concerns in particular training options to address immediate labour demand pressures, e.g. in the health sector. In some countries, non-government actors adapted existing courses to deliver more content online, and government actors provided extra funding to help displaced workers fill roles in essential services (e.g., United States). Finally, several countries created online tools to connect displaced workers with vacancies in sectors experiencing increased labour demand (e.g. France and Germany) (see OECD (2020[15]) for an overview and innovative examples). Others strengthened and promoted their existing tools, such as online job-matching platforms or skill assessment tools (e.g. Netherlands). Countries are starting to prepare their employment services for the time when social-distancing measures are reduced. Well-functioning private and public employment services are crucial to facilitate the relocation of jobseekers as labour demand shifts across sectors and region following the crisis. Some countries are increasing their funding to job retraining and up-skilling programmes for workers who have lost their jobs during the crisis (e.g. Korea, Indonesia).Social dialogue, based on respect for freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining, has a crucial role to play in designing policies to promote social justice and buttressing other measures by governments to protect jobs, incomes and companies. As in times of prosperity, bipartite and tripartite social dialogue in a context of crisis can contribute to effectively reconciling competing interests and building trust in, commitment to, and ownership of policies. Since the initial phase of the COVID-19 outbreak, the ILO has been calling upon its member states to join forces with employers’ and workers’ organizations, representing the actors of the real economy, in order to shape national policies during the crisis, supporting their members, and helping to design a return to work that is safe and keeps businesses running. A central pillar of the ILO’s policy framework for responding to the COVID-19 crisis (Pillar 4) entails the “strengthening of social dialogue, collective bargaining and labour relations institutions and processes.” Similarly, in view of the gravity of the situation, the International Organisation of Employers (IOE) and International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) issued a joint statement on COVID-19, calling for enhanced coordination of all actors and for international financial institutions to support socio-economic measures and policies. Further, it called ''in the strongest terms'' for social dialogue and on the important role of the social partners. Employers and workers organizations representing globally or in specific regions, social and economic sectors, have followed in the footsteps of the IOE and the ITUC and developed joint statements and calls for action to protect workers and support enterprises. Some examples of the role of social dialogue and social partners during the pandemic are provided in Box 2. Overall, across the globe, social partners engaging in bipartite and tripartite social dialogue at all levels – enterprise, sector, national, cross-border- provided crucial information for the design and implementation of policies and measures aimed to mitigate the socio-economic impacts of the pandemic. Multiple social dialogue agreements were reached to support business and workers, notably on health and safety protocols preventing the propagation of the virus at workplaces, job retention, protecting wages and ensuring business continuity, but also on broader socio-economic national and cross-border responses.Solving the health crisis is an essential precondition to solving the economic and jobs crisis. And, while the development of a vaccine is likely many months away, a comprehensive package of public health interventions – ranging from largescale testing, tracking and tracing, to enhanced personal hygiene, and continued physical-distancing policies – will go a long way towards averting a second wave. Meanwhile, for workers who do not need to be physically present at the workplace, working from home may remain a viable way to ensure the continuation of work without incurring the risk of contracting the virus while commuting and working. Most G20 countries have developed specific policies for a safe return to work, often recommending a gradual reopening based on several criteria. These include limiting the frequency of and closeness of contact between workers and between workers and customers, and increasing the preparedness to respond to new outbreaks. In India, the guidelines for the multi-phase (Phase 1-3) re-opening plan identify red, green and orange zones based on risk profiles, and define protocols and activities allowed within each zone. Employers are counseled to promote remote work, ensure physical distancing, and conduct thermal scanning exams. In Australia, the state and federal governments agreed to 10 guiding principles to help businesses and workers maintain safe working environments through the COVID-19 pandemic, including for Safe Work Australia (a national tripartite policy body) to be a central source of practical work health and safety guidance and tools on COVID-19. In Turkey, DG OSH of the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Services prepared sector-specific guidelines, posters, videos and checklists including high risk for COVID19 spread such as markets, cargo transportation and pharmacies. Other G20 countries with such gradual, sector-specific reopening agreements include Indonesia, China, and Mexico. Many return to work policies ask employers to conduct a risk assessment and to organise safe working arrangements according to a hierarchy of controls as suggested by the ILO Guidelines on OSH management systems (ILO, 2009[23]) and return to work guidance (ILO, 2020[24]).In addition to defining appropriate practices in government guidance, laws, and regulation, firms may need support to implement workplace health and safety practices (for example, via tax credits). In many countries, collective bargaining and social dialogue have recently proved instrumental in ensuring safer workplaces. The guidelines and codes of good conduct established by social partners, and the agreements signed between employers and trade unions in this area, for example in France, Italy and Spain, show how social dialogue and collective bargaining can be mobilised to complement public action. Alongside these changes, isolating workers who are ill will remain central to keeping the spread of the disease at bay. Automatic extensions of sickness benefit rules through epidemic laws have proven effective in countries where such laws exist, particularly for workers on quarantine. More generally, however, keeping in place extraordinary sickness benefit and paid sick-leave entitlements and extending them to groups of workers who are not covered would be important. The crisis has accentuated long-known gaps in sickness benefit regulations in a number of countries. These countries, some of which have introduced new mandatory regulations for the first time in history, should consider closing these gaps permanently. At the same time, when workers who have been on paid sick leave can safely return to work, governments will have to reintroduce incentives and employment support. In particular, it will be important to prevent paid sick-leave systems from becoming a pathway to disability benefits for the long-term unemployed, as has happened in some of the advanced G20 economies in the past after a recession. This is crucial in the current context, as some workers currently on sick leave or quarantine may not be able to return to their job. Connecting workers on sick leave with occupational rehabilitation and employment services will be critical to prevent long-term labour market exit. Adapting job retention schemes Job retention schemes, government-financed STW and wage subsidy schemes appear to have averted an initial surge in unemployment in a number of countries. However, designed mainly to provide immediate support, they now need to be adapted to ensure sufficiently strong incentives for firms to move off support, and for workers to return to viable jobs. This would reduce the pressure on public budgets as well as the risk that job retention schemes become an obstacle to the recovery by curbing job reallocation towards more viable and productive firms. Concerns about potential abuse, already raised in the early phase of the crisis, may become more prominent if some firms claim support for shortened hours even after workers have resumed their normal schedules. The main challenge going forward is to focus job retention schemes on jobs that, despite a short-term risk of being terminated, would likely remain viable in the longer term. This will be a challenge in the current climate and, to avoid a sudden surge in layoffs, job retention schemes should be adapted with caution, in line with evolving economic and health conditions, and the sector-specific consequences. To do this, governments have a number of policy levers that they can employ: With employment unlikely to recover back to its trend level in the near future in most G20 countries, social protection systems will be put under severe pressure. A balance will need to be struck between maintaining adequate income support, including through job retention schemes, and encouraging active job search as job growth resumes. In the case of unemployment benefits, the experience of the global financial crisis suggests that extended benefit durations are less likely to harm employment outcomes during a severe downturn. When benefit durations are short and many unemployed exhaust their benefits without finding employment, countries should therefore review benefit provisions, and consider temporary extensions. Linking maximum benefit durations to the economy-wide unemployment rate is one approach to balancing support with the need to encourage continued job search. “Mutual obligation” requirements, which commit jobless benefit recipients to active job search efforts, should be progressively reestablished where they have been relaxed or suspended during lockdown. In addition, accompanying any benefit extensions with strengthened incentives to move off benefits, such as requiring longer-term claimants to re-apply, introducing waiting periods between claim periods, or reducing benefits over time, can help to encourage job search without compromising the workers’ right to freely choose employment. However, all of these measures should be accompanied by reinforced support to help jobseekers return to work in terms of training and job readiness programmes as well as job search assistance more generally. Governments will also need to re-assess temporary programmes introduced to support self-employed workers and small businesses in the initial phase of the crisis. These programmes were designed to deliver support at speed, often with limited concern for targeting, and where such schemes are not linked to past earnings, this link should now be introduced. More generally, this crisis has highlighted the need to extend rights to out-of-work income support to self-employed workers, and workers in other forms of employment, that are available to dependent employees. While including the self-employed in earnings-related social-protection schemes can be fraught with concerns due to challenges in identifying their contributory income, several countries have been successful in establishing well-designed policies that work for their circumstances, including the combination of non-contributory and contributory schemes. As jobseekers exhaust their unemployment benefit entitlements, and as workers in non-standard jobs or informal workers run down their savings, demand for “last-resort” minimum-income benefits, such as social assistance and conditional and unconditional cash transfer schemes, is likely to rise. Effective targeting of minimum-income benefits will be important as fiscal pressures mount, but governments should seek to ensure that those in urgent need continue to receive adequate support. 36 For example, income tests could be gradually reintroduced to allow households to adjust their expenditure, while relaxing asset tests (e.g. exempt the family home or business assets) for as long as job opportunities remain scarce. In countries with limited institutional capacity to perform means- or income-tests, and/or with large informal economies, categorical benefits for vulnerable population groups such as children, elderly, persons with disability, pregnant women, single parents etc. may constitute a viable targeting alternative. Countries may also want to expand these programmes to cover young adults, where this is not already the case.Some jobseekers may be able to seize on job opportunities that arise, even in times of crisis, including in essential occupations. Others may require assistance and encouragement to find new work. For these individuals the crisis may represent an occasion for up skilling or retraining, to increase their employability and avoid falling into long-term unemployment. As economies open, public and private employment services (PES) can play a role in supporting workers to move from sectors operating below capacity, to those that have picked up faster. Such job transitions are easiest when skill requirements are similar, and ultra-short courses may be sufficient to support some displaced vocational and technical workers to move into occupations that are in demand. Past evidence shows that active labour market programmes (ALMPs) tend to have a larger impact in periods of slow growth and higher unemployment, and countries should scale up those ALMPs that have proven effective. Countries may consider promoting job creation by temporarily scaling up time-limited hiring subsidies, or raising incentives to take up work by offering re-employment bonuses for jobseekers as many OECD countries did during the global financial crisis. The crisis may also be an occasion for countries to modernise employment services and make them more flexible. PES with well-developed digital services (such as e-services for users and automated back-office systems) and staff teleworking arrangements found themselves much better prepared to respond to the crisis and keep their service offers intact. In countries where these areas are still less developed, such innovations could contribute to making services available to a large number of jobseekers while respecting physical-distancing requirements. Alongside strengthening digital services, PES will need to develop strategies to identify and support jobseekers without digital skills (and adequate IT equipment) and those with complex needs in times when the scope for face-to-face interactions may remain limited. PES in many countries will need to build up capacity and avoid neglecting support and services that may have been of secondary importance during the initial phase of the crisis (e.g. career advice, counselling). All of this will likely require equipping PES with additional resources and trainers with the necessary skills. At the same time, to ensure a sustainable inclusion of vulnerable groups in the labour market, efforts should be scaled up to enhance synergies between employment and social services.