firms and workers, and it uses mobility data to document the evolution of the lockdown. In section 4, we describe the different data sources and methods used for our labor market analysis. That analysis is presented in section 5. It tracks employment and unemployment trends during the lockdown, with an emphasis on how the overall picture has been shaped by the dynamics of hirings and separations. Finally, in section 6, conclusions are presented as well as some key research questions moving forward to understand the impact of the pandemic on the Greek labor market.

# **2. Literature Review**

## **2.1 Challenges related to data and measurement**

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected entire economies and labor markets at a very fast pace, requiring policy makers to have access to up-to-date information to design suitable and timely policy responses. However, the disruptions caused by the pandemic and the speed with which the crisis has unfolded have shown that the methods and sources normally used to track labor market outcomes may have significant shortcomings in this context. For example, even gold standard surveys designed to provide up-to-date information, such as the Current Population Survey (CPS) in the United States, may not be sufficient to keep up with the fast spread of the virus and its disruptive impacts. Administrative data released with shorter time lags, as in the case of UI claims in the United States,<sup>4</sup> have also shown to have shortcomings that limit their effectiveness in timely and comprehensively informing policy responses during the pandemic (Cajner et al, 2020).

Furthermore, social distancing and other transmission prevention measures have affected several data-related activities around the world with potential impacts on data quality and reliability. ILO (2020b) shows that data collection, supervision, cleaning and analysis have been affected in several countries. Adjustments in survey instruments, data collection methods and weighting schemes have become necessary to address issues related to low response rates and non-random patterns in nonresponses. Even with these adjustments, response rates have dropped in several cases. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics documents that the response rate for the 2020 May Establishment Survey was 69%, compared to a 75% average between March 2019 and February 2020. The corresponding figure for the household survey in May 2020 was 67%, compared to the 82% average over the 12 months ending in February 2020 (BLS, 2020). Furthermore, focusing on the nature on non-responses in the March and April 2020 rounds of the CPS, Montenovo et al. (2020) show that the drops in responses in these two months were not random.

The specific disruptions emerging from the crisis have also implied that standard labor market definitions may not be sufficient to fully capture labor market dynamics under the pandemic. For example, given the different forms of mobility restrictions and social distancing measures currently in place, variations in unemployment may be misleading. In fact, in the COVID-19 era, slow increases in unemployment may coexist with significant job losses. This is because non-employed people, despite being interested in working, might not be actively looking for a job as a result of restrictions on economic activities or the perceived risk of contracting the disease at work. As such, going beyond the analysis of employment, unemployment and labor force

> 4 Official estimates on UI claims are released 12 days after the end of the week they refer to.

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