initial losses.<sup>32</sup> Although the recovery was slightly faster in percentage point terms for workers below age 30 and those without college education than for older and non-college educated workers, the difference was not enough to significantly reduce the gaps in job losses by age and education. Analysis for a smaller set of countries suggests that the likelihood of job recovery among those who lost jobs during the pandemic was lower for female, younger and non-college educated workers, compared to male, older and college-educated workers in these countries (Figure 16).<sup>33</sup> Self-employment accounted for a large share of the recovery in employment for workers with lower levels of education, who tend to be the vulnerable group. In seven countries, 71 percent of the increase in employment rates from May-June to August-September occurred in self-employment for primary educated workers, compared to 46 percent and 60 percent respectively for workers with secondary and tertiary education.<sup>34</sup> In these countries, self-employment also accounted for a large share of the recovery in employment for women (44 percent of the increase, compared to 0.3 percent for men) and urban workers (49 percent, compared to a fall in the share of self-employment for rural workers).<sup>35</sup> Selfemployment in developing economies tends to be informal and insecure in nature, which suggests that the job recovery in some countries may be occurring with a rise in more insecure forms of employment.

Initial job and income losses due to COVID-19 were associated with rising food insecurity. While government policies across many countries tried to limit the damage, safety nets in low-income countries were insufficient to mitigate a rise in food insecurity.<sup>36</sup> As restrictions were scaled back, the average share of food-insecure population in 16 countries fell from 13 percent to 9 percent.<sup>37</sup> Job recovery was associated with rising food security (Figure 17). For households across the socioeconomic spectrum, food insecurity became less of a concern by August-September, but improvements were more pronounced for households with college-educated members.<sup>38</sup> Extending the time window of the analysis to January 2021 for a smaller set of 8 countries, we observe continuing signs of uneven recovery in labor markets, along with some signs of stalling.<sup>39</sup> Women and those living in urban areas continued to experience a slower recovery in employment towards the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021 as a proportion of the initial losses suffered — while employment among men reached 95 percent of its pre-pandemic level by January 2021, women’s employment was only at 89 percent. Employment recovery also continued lagging for urban areas (Annex. Figure A-7). Moreover, overall recovery in employment seemed to have stalled for the 8 countries since September 2020, even though 32 Furthermore, Batana et al. (2021) find, based on city-level panel data from Ethiopia and from Kinshasa, DRC, that households from large, densely populated cities (and, within cities, vulnerable households residing in remote areas), suffered greater COVID-19 related losses and recovered at a slower rate.

33 This analysis could be done for a subset of 6 countries from the original sample of 20 countries, because it requires data on all the characteristics of workers and households, namely age, gender, location and education.

34 These 7 countries are: Argentina, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Mongolia, Paraguay, and El Salvador.

35 Data on respondents’ urban/rural status is not available for Guatemala and El Salvador.

36 While public safety nets were scaled up, they were largely inadequate in lower income countries. Average per capita spending on COVID-19 social protection by LICs and LMICs was 3 percent and 19 percent, respectively, that of UMICs (that spent US $156 per capita).

37 We measure food insecurity as the proportion of households with hungry adults who went without at least one meal in the last 30 days before the survey. Our results are based on a sample of 16 countries where policy stringency fell between May-June and Aug-Sep. 13 of these countries are also used in the employment analysis.

38 This data is for 13 countries, for which overall food insecurity fell from 12.6% to 9.3% during the same period.

39 We use a sample of 8 countries with at least one wave in each of the following time periods: May-July, Aug-Oct, and Nov-Jan’21. Stringency did not necessarily decrease for all countries in this sample, although it did on average. These 8 countries are Burkina Faso, Bulgaria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cambodia, Mongolia, Malawi, Uganda, and Uzbekistan.

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