Georgia averaged real GDP growth in the years 2012-2020 of 4.1 percent (source: IMF World Economic Outlook, October 2021), and GDP per capita reached USD 4,272 in 2019.<sup>7</sup> Both economies were somewhat integrated with the world economy prior to the pandemic, but Georgia mores so. In 2019, merchandise trade as a percent of GDP was over 61 percent for Jordan and 76 percent for Georgia and services trade comprised 28 percent and 40 percent of GDP, respectively (WDI, 2019). Georgia had also posted a higher level of exports as a share of GDP (54.8 percent) than Jordan at 36.3 (WDI, 2019) and had also seen faster growth in unit export values than _Table 3-1: Labor Market Statistics, 2019_ Jordan (WDI). Within services, Jordan was much more Unemployment Labor Force reliant on the travel and tourism sector, which accounted Rate Participation for around 18 percent of GDP and of total employment in <u>(percent age 15+)</u> Georgia 11.6 62.9 2019 (World Bank, 2021) relative to 7.6 percent of GDP Jordan 16.8 39.2 and 5 percent of total employment for Georgia in 2018 Source: WDI national estimates. (World Bank, 2019).

The labor market context pre-COVID varied somewhat between Georgia and Jordan as well. They each approached the regulation of labor markets differently. Georgia’s labor market regulation is considerably more flexible in terms of permitted hours of work and contractual arrangements. It has no minimum wage, whereas Jordan’s minimum wage is approximately 50 percent of value added per worker (Employing Workers Database (EWD, 2020). Georgia’s regulatory requirements are also more flexible with respect to dismissing workers. No third-party notification or approval is required; nor are there priority retraining or rehiring requirements for dismissed workers. Jordan, in contrast, is among the 32 countries with the most stringent regulation of worker dismissals (including prohibiting dismissals for any reason without third party approval), and fixed term contracts are prohibited for permanent tasks (EWD, 2020).

Labor market outcomes entering the crisis also diverged. Unemployment in Jordan was more than 5 percent points higher and labor force participation 23.7 percentage points lower than in Georgia (Table 3-1). Jordan’s female participation rate (13.4 percent in 2019)<sup>8</sup> is among the lowest in the world and female unemployment — 19 percent at the end of Q4 2019 was also relatively high just before the COVID-19 pandemic. Georgia’s female participation and unemployment rates, in contrast, were 54.5% and 10.2%,<sup>9</sup> respectively. Georgia’s population aged 25 or over was more educated, with 59 percent having completed at least post-secondary (2017, WDI/UNESCO) as compared with Jordan’s 27 percent (in 2010, WDI/UNESCO).

For those who were employed in Jordan pre-COVID, a greater share of jobs was in the public sector and in formal private sector jobs than in Georgia.<sup>10</sup> The share of jobs by type of employment from Jordan’s most recent pre-COVID labor force survey (2016) is shown in Table 3-2. Fifty-four percent of jobs were private sector wage jobs, and approximately half of these were formal and permanent, with the rest being either

> 7 In PPP terms, Jordan’s per capita GDP in 2019 was $10,497.00, substantially lower than Georgia’s level of $15,623.00. 8 National estimate, 2019. ILO models predict 14.6 percent in 2019.

> 9 National estimate, 2019.

> 10 To delineate formal from informal employment in the respective labor force surveys, which are available in the original micro datasets from the respective countries. Appendix Table 2 in the longer version of this paper explains how we define "permanency" in CFUWBES (Jordan and Georgia), LMPS (Jordan), LFS (Georgia), and CMMHHS (Jordan).

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