classified as “Blend”). All results presented below are simple country averages in which each country carries the same weight (but workers and households within countries are weighted appropriately).

The HFPS data reveal that while falling policy stringency was accompanied by a recovery in both employment and incomes, these were still well below pre-pandemic levels in September 2020. Across 17 countries, employment recovered to only 83 percent of its pre-pandemic average by August-September after falling to 71 percent in May-June. While an average of 63 percent of households in a country reported a fall in income in May-June, 58 percent continued to have lower incomes in August-September compared to pre-COVID levels.

**Figure 15: Decline in employment rates between preFigure 16: Predicted probability of recovering job COVID and May-June (pp) & share of loss lost during the pandemic, by August-September 2020 recovered by August-September**

<!-- Start of picture text --> 40% Unrecovered loss<br>Recovery: May-June to Aug-Sept<br>33%<br>Loss: pre-Covid to May-June<br>29% 80% 67%<br>30% 26% 25% 26% 60% 53% 48%<br>22% 41% 43% 38% 41%<br>20% 40% 34%<br>20%<br>20% 10%<br>12%<br>0%<br>10%<br>0%<br>Gender Age Location Education<br>Note: Results for 14-17 countries. All changes measured in Note: Results for 6 countries from logit models where the<br>percentage points (pp) terms. Loss in employment from pre- dependent variable indicates whether the individual is working<br>pandemic to May-June is split into (i) recovery in employment again in Aug/Sep 2020 (for those who had a job pre-pandemic<br>between May-June and Aug-Sep, and (ii) “unrecovered loss”. but lost it in May/June 2020). 95% confidence intervals shown<br>for each bar.<br>Female Male Age = 25 Age = 45 Rural Urban Any secondary Any tertiary<br>Female Male Urban Rural College<br>Under 30 Above 30 Non-College None or any primary<br><!-- End of picture text --> Within countries, those who suffered the larger initial shocks – women, younger workers, urban workers, and the low-educated – either recovered more slowly compared to their counterparts or did not recover fast enough to significantly reverse initial disparities in losses (Figure 15). By August-September, the recovery in female employment lagged behind that in male employment — men recovered 49 percent of their initial employment losses while women recouped 30 percent, after the initial shock was more unfavorable to women by 6 percentage points (pp).<sup>31</sup> Urban workers, hardest hit in the immediate aftermath of the crisis, similarly lagged behind rural workers in recovering their initial losses — while rural workers recovered 58 percent of initial losses by August-September, those living in urban areas recovered only a third of their 31 There are several ways to compare the rate of recovery in employment between groups, including: (i) percentage point change in employment rate of each group between post-pandemic rounds 1 and 2; and change between rounds 1 and 2 as a share of (ii) employment rate in round 1, (iii) pre-pandemic employment rate, and (iv) initial decline (between pre-pandemic and round 1). We use (iv) as our metric to compare employment gains of different groups in Figure 1, as it has an intuitive interpretation: 100% would indicate that all losses suffered by a group (e.g. women) since the pandemic has been recovered, and the comparison of two rates (e.g. between men and women) would indicate how far away each group is, relative to the other, from its pre-pandemic employment rate.

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