Short- and Long-term Impact of COVID-19 on Earnings and Employment in the Metropolitan City

This paper analyses the impact of the various waves of COVID-19 on wages and employment. The government of India announced a strict nationwide lockdown on March 25, 2020, to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. People lost their jobs or faced wage cuts during the lockdown. Globally, women experienced a greater loss in employment and paid working hours than men. To understand the short-term and long-term impact of COVID-19 in Ahmedabad city, we conducted four rounds of surveys, online during March–April 2020 and March–April 2021, and offline in September 2021 and September–October 2022. We found that women and low-skilled workers were more likely to have received a wage cut during the lockdown period. During the pandemic year 2021, less than a tenth of respondents reported changing their jobs, while in the post-pandemic year, 2022, more than a quarter of the respondents reported change in economic activity. The logistic model showed that this churning of jobs post-pandemic was true for low skill and high skill occupations. Further, in the post-pandemic period, there was a shift from wage employment to self-employment, among both low- and high-skilled categories of occupations. Given the varying impact of COVID by gender and occupation, policies must be designed to address vulnerabilities and encourage businesses.