Job market effects of COVID-19 on urban Ukrainian households

Abstract: The employment status of billions of people has been affected by the COVID epidemic around the Globe. New evidence is needed on how to mitigate the job market crisis, but there exists only a handful of studies mostly focusing on developed countries. We fill in this gap in the literature by using novel data from Ukraine, a transition country in Eastern Europe, which enacted strict quarantine policies early on. We model four binary outcomes to identify respondents (i) who are not working during quarantine, (ii) those who are more likely to work from home, (iii) respondents who are afraid of losing a job, and, finally, (iv) survey participants who have savings for 1 month or less if quarantine is further extended. Our findings suggest that respondents employed in public administration, programming and IT, as well as highly qualified specialists, were more likely to secure their jobs during the quarantine. Females, better educated respondents, and those who lived in Kyiv were more likely to work remotely. Working in the public sector also made people more confident about their future employment perspectives. Although our findings are limited to urban households only, they provide important early evidence on the correlates of job market outcomes, expectations, and financial security, indicating potential deterioration of socio-economic inequalities.