using forward-looking firm level data, find that the COVID-19 induced shocks lead to 3 new hires for every 10 layoffs. They also project that the total number of entire working days performed from home will triple after the end of the pandemic and that between 32% and 42% of all layoffs will be permanent.

Findings of research focused on the Canadian labor market are in line with the results in the United States. Using the Canadian Labor Force Survey up to April 2020, Béland et al. (2020b) document substantial increases in unemployment (approximately 5 percentage points) and drops in labor force participation (3.7 percentage points), hours worked (1.5 percentage points) and wages (0.4 percentage points). These impacts were less severe for essential workers or workers who can work remotely, while they were more pronounced for younger and less educated workers. Differently from the results for the United States, they do not find evidence of differential effects by gender or of disproportionate impacts of the crisis on labor market outcomes for migrants.

Adams-Prassl et al. (2020) compare the impacts of COVID-19 on jobs, earnings and hour worked in three countries that have introduced different policies in response to the pandemic, i.e. the United Kingdom, United States and Germany. They find substantial differences across and within countries. Job losses in the United States and the United Kingdom were substantially higher (18% and 15%) than in Germany (5%), a country with a well-established short-time work scheme. They point out that the United Kingdom also introduced a similar scheme, which however does not allow furloughed workers to do any work for their employers, thereby potentially discouraging firms from applying. Not surprisingly, the study also finds that furloughing was more prevalent in the United Kingdom (43%) than in the United States (31%), a country that strongly relied on the expansion of unemployment benefits to respond to the crisis. The study also finds that in all countries, people who can work from home are less likely to lose their jobs. This is also the case for people with permanent contracts, fixed hours and in salaried jobs. In the United States and the United Kingdom, less educated workers and women were found to be more likely to lose their jobs during the pandemic. This is not the case in Germany. Based on a survey covering China, Japan, Korea, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Italy, Belot et al (2020) also find that young people are severely affected by the crisis in these countries.

Focusing on Denmark, another country that introduced significant measures to encourage job retention, Bennedsen et al. (2020) provide additional evidence on the strong impact of these policies in helping firms keep their workers. Estimates presented in this study suggest that the policies introduced by the Danish government contributed to a reduction in layoffs by 81,000 jobs and increase in furloughs by 285,000. Employment subsidies seem to have a stronger correlation with job retention, while the correlation is weaker for cost subsidies and the evidence for tax subsidies is mixed. The authors conclude that labor subsidies meet their objective of preserving employer-employee relationships, while the impact of the other policies is less clear.

Sweden is another example of a country that has leveraged on strong job retention interventions to respond to the crisis. Hensvick et al. (2020) study the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on job search using real-time data from the job board of the Swedish Public Employment Service. They find that between March and May employers posted 8