Egger, et al., 2021). Apart from Egger et al. (2021) who include refugee samples in their analyses, no study to the best of our knowledge has empirically investigated pre- and postpandemic labor market trends for refugees and hosts in Kenya. Although Janssens et al. (2021) and Kansiime et al. (2021) include pre-COVID-19 trends in their analyses, the authors only consider the impact of the pandemic on Kenyans. In addition, Janssens et al. (2021) conducted their analysis in rural Kenya while Kansiime et al. (2021) compared the situation between Kenya and Uganda, neither of which provides a holistic picture of the situation of Kenyan nationals together with refugees living in both urban and rural areas of Kenya. The current study aims to fill these gaps and contributes to the literature that examines the labor market implications of the COVID-19 pandemic around the world in general and in developing countries in particular.

The paper also contributes to the growing literature on refugee economies. While most rigorous empirical examinations in this field have considered the impact of refugee migration to the host community (Alix-Garcia, Walker, Bartlett, Onder, & Sanghi, 2018; DepetrisChauvin & Santos, 2018; Maystadt & Duranton, 2019; Verme & Schuettler, 2019), or have evaluated policy changes within specific refugee contexts (MacPherson & Sterck, 2021; Sterck & Delius, 2020) this study uses a comparative design to investigate the connection between a global demand-supply shock and labor outcomes of both the refugee and the national community, with results being representative at the national level for both communities.

The paper is structured as follows: In the next section we briefly describe the refugee context and COVID-19 situation in Kenya. In section 3 we elaborate on the novel high-frequency phone data used in the paper and present our empirical strategy. In Section 4 we present our main findings on how refugees experienced the pandemic over time as compared to nationals. In Section 5 we discuss the results and their policy implications.

# **2. Background**

## **2.1 The Kenyan refugee context**

Kenya is the second largest refugee-hosting country in Africa after Ethiopia, with an estimated 534,622 refugees and asylum seekers as of September 30, 2021. Refugee inflows started in the early 1970s and reached a peak in the 1990s with refugees today living in Kenya primarily stemming from Somalia (53%), South Sudan (25%), the Democratic Republic of Congo (9%), and Ethiopia (6%) (UNHCR Kenya, 2021). Refugees are hosted in three main locations: Dadaab camps in Garissa county (43%), Kakuma camp and Kalobeyei settlement in Turkana county (41%) and urban areas, mainly Nairobi (16%). As more refugees have entered the country, camps have grown to considerable sizes, with Kakuma and Dadaab camps hosting more than 200,000 refugees each in July 2020 (UNHCR Kenya, 2021; UNHCR Kenya, 2021). In both counties the camps serve as commercial hubs in an otherwise semi-arid infertile place and thus have grown to fulfill a central cultural, social, and economic role, for both the refugees and the national community.

With the influx of refugees in the 1990s, Kenya changed its aid-delivery approach to one based on temporary protection and containment. Instead of integrating refugees into the 4