Bhatiya, Apurav Yash

Chakravorty, Bhaskar

Imbert, Clément

Lohnert, Maximilian

Poonam , Panda

Rathelot, Roland

This paper presents evidence on the short and long-term impact of the COVID-19 crisis on India’s rural youth. We interviewed about 2,000 vocational trainees from Bihar and Jharkhand three times after the first national lockdown in 2020, between June 2020 and December 2021. We find that a third of respondents who were in salaried jobs pre-lockdown lost their jobs, and half of those who worked out of state returned home shortly after the lockdown. We report a stark difference between men and women: while many male workers took up informal employment, most female workers dropped out of the labour force. In the second part of the paper, we use a randomised experiment to document the effects of a government-supported digital platform designed to provide jobs to low-skilled workers. The platform turned out to be difficult to use and publicised only few job ads. We find no effect on job search intensity or employment. Our findings suggest that bridging the gap between rural young workers and urban formal labour markets requires more active and targeted policy interventions, especially for female workers

Impact of the COVID-19 crisis on India’s rural youth : evidence from a panel survey and an experiment

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Warwick Research Archives Portal Repository