OECD Employment Outlook 2020
Worker Security and the COVID-19 Crisis
The 2020 edition of the OECD Employment Outlook focuses on worker security and the COVID-19 crisis. Chapter 1 provides an initial assessment of the labour market consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak and the resulting economic crisis. It also presents an overview of the emergency labour market and social policy measures implemented by OECD countries and discusses directions for further policy adaptation as countries move out of lockdown. Chapter 2 investigates the uneven access to unemployment benefits for workers in part-time and less stable jobs, which often accentuates the hardship they face in times of crisis, and discusses the difficult balance between work incentives and income security. Chapter 3 provides a comparative review of employment protection legislation (EPL) across OECD countries by developing a new version of the OECD's EPL indicators, which now include an improved assessment of regulations for collective redundancies, unfair dismissals and enforcement issues. Chapter 4 takes a fresh look at job polarisation, and in particular the hollowing out of jobs in middle-skill occupations. Finally, Chapter 5 examines the changing labour market outcomes for middle-educated vocational education and training graduates, whose labour market perspectives are challenged by the contraction of jobs in middle-skill occupations.
Also available in: French
Foreword
This edition of the Employment Outlook is released in the midst of a global health emergency that is turning into an economic and social crisis that evokes the Great Depression. The epidemiological model developed by the OECD shows that the severe restrictions to social and economic life that most OECD countries (and many others) have had to take to slow the spread of the virus have prevented the collapse of health care systems and helped to avoid hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of deaths. Yet, there is no question that these measures have had very serious economic and social consequences. Entire sectors of the economy were essentially closed down for weeks on end. Between the last quarter of 2019 and the second quarter of 2020, OECD-wide GDP is projected to have fallen by almost 15%. In the first three months of the COVID‑19 crisis, in OECD countries for which data are available, hours worked fell ten times more than in the first three months of the 2008‑09 global financial crisis.
Also available in: French