were collected at the beginning of the second wave of COVID-19 extending to the height of it.<sup>5</sup> EIFBS firms comprise a multistage stratified sample drawn from the 2017 economic census sample of 33,331 establishments, which is itself drawn from a sample of 117,149 establishments. The EIFBS sample design is based on three parameters to ensure that the sample produces representative and precise estimates at the national level. These parameters are number of employees, region (urban governorates, lower and upper Egypt) and economic activity level (2 digits). The sample frame, however, excludes firms with less than 5 employees and thus is only representative of small, medium (SMEs) and large manufacturing enterprises. This also implies that informal firms – albeit present – are underrepresented in our sample. We expect that the results pertaining to informality would be stronger with the inclusion of more informal firms. More detailed information on sampling can be found in Annex 1.

Two questionnaires were administered, one for firms that are still in operation, and another, very similar one<sup>6</sup> , for firms that have exited the market or have temporarily shut down operations. The response rate is 75%, meaning that we successfully interviewed 2,383 establishments of which 2,338 are in operation and 45 firms that have either exited the market or are temporarily closed. Of the 766 firms we could not interview, an unknown number, and presumably a much higher proportion, have also exited the market. The issue of representativeness is one of sample selection bias, which arises if firms that refuse to respond have different characteristics to those that did respond. In principle, the presence of such bias can be checked for by comparing characteristics of firms in the sample with those not taking part in the interview. But since data are, by definition, not collected from firms that refuse/didn’t take part, it is not possible to compare the characteristics of firms who responded with those who did not. But what we can do is compare some of the broad characteristics of the drawn sample to the actual sample of firms we used. Comparisons for governorate, size, export status and many other characteristics are pretty similar. Actual sample characteristic are quite close to the drawn sample.<sup>7</sup> The questionnaire includes 14 modules: basic firm identification data, firm size and employment, firm expectations on recovery and potential exit, changes in firm performance, pandemic transmission channels, ownership and management characteristics, innovation, management practices and use of information technology (IT), production costs, obstacles to operation, exports and global value chains, obstacles to exports, worker training and government support.

The survey includes information on the distribution of female and male employees preand post- COVID, which we use to construct our measure for the gender employment gap. Specifically, we are able to infer the change in employment and other indicators pre- and postCOVID-19 based on a number of retrospective questions in the EIFBS questionnaire. For instance, we ask about the total number of employees in the last financial year prior to COVID19, and the total number of employees recorded at the month of the survey. This allows us to work out changes in total employment post-COVID. Similarly for male and female employment.

_Stylized Facts_

> 5 Precisely between November 19th 2020 and the 5th of February 2021. Precisely between November 19th 2020 and the 5th of February 2021.

> 6 Only four modules are slightly different. The main difference is that for temporarily closed or closed firms there are no values for current variables such as production, exports, employment or revenues. 7 Available from authors upon request.

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