As the crisis wore on, job losses mounted. As shown in Table 5-2, Jordan’s formal firms experienced broadly similar conditions by the time of the second CFUWBES wave as they had earlier. They reported only an additional 1.8 weeks of closures since the previous CFUWBES (June-July), when they reported 8.7 weeks on average, and a similar share of firms reported supply disruptions (85 percent). The share of sales comprised of exports fell relative to 2018, in contrast to the rise as of wave 1, and sales declines were of a similar magnitude as the previous round (50 percent). Meanwhile, a lower share of workers was operating remotely (2.8 percent on average relative to 8.7), and the share of firms newly engaging in online or modified (delivery) activities fell. A lower share of remaining firms still in operation was experiencing financial issues, despite the fact that fewer received policy support. By wave 2, we predict the cumulative loss of PFPS jobs to be 25.2 percent, including 9.4 percent from permanent firm closures (Table 5-1).<sup>41</sup> The survey-measured result is 25.5 percent, which is very close to the jobs at risk model prediction.

These estimates are also close to the net observed job loss rate of 23.3 percent in the CMMHH for the most similar group available in that data — formally employed private sector workers in the WBES sectors (PFPS workers) of either Jordanian, Palestinian, or Syrian nationality (“PFPS” workers). According to the CMMHH, 18.2 percent of these workers became unemployed; 2.8 percent were newly out of the labor force, and 2.3 percent had become employed as irregular workers or outside of the formal private sector. Even with the differences in the _Table 5-3 Jordan: Rates of Net Job Loss by Type of Job, Percentage Change in Employment Levels from March to December 2020_

|Employer Type|Net rate ofjob loss|
|---|---|
|PFPS core sectors|23.3 percent|
|PFPS other sectors|17.5 percent|
|Private sector non-PFPS|-4.2percent|
|Public sector|3.5 percent|
|Source: CMMHH.||

surveys’ scopes, sampling approaches, and the questions posed on employment, the overall magnitudes of estimated jobs lost among formal private sector workers are remarkably similar. This provides support for our general approach to projecting aggregate job losses by linking firm-level modeled estimates and labor force surveys.<sup>42</sup> (Detailed results on “PFPS” workers from the CMMHH are reported in Appendix 2 in the longer version of this paper.) Since PFPS jobs represented only 42 percent of private sector wage jobs and a minority of all jobs in Jordan pre COVID, we use the CMMHH survey to examine whether the levels of job loss have differed across broad

> 41 The modeled incremental job losses between rounds were 9.3 percent, with 2.3 percent due to permanent firm closures.

42 In the WBES, permanent workers are defined as those working fulltime in the formal private sector. In the LMPS, permanent workers are defined as private sector wage earners either reported to be permanent workers or to be fulltime and regular workers. In the MENA monitor survey, due the limitation in questions, we use regular and formal wage earners in the private sector as a proxy of permanent workers. We compare the share of permanent workers in total employment using our definitions and the results are very similar in the three surveys.

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