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The study examines the consequences of the COVID‐19 pandemic‐induced lockdown on the socio‐economic status of 212 female migrant workers employed in the informal sector, originating from four underprivileged districts of West Bengal, India. The study assesses the changes in their scope of employment, financial instability, and the level of violence experienced within households and workplaces in the pre‐pandemic and post‐lockdown phases. We apply the binary logistic regression to identify factors influencing their low employment scope, the t‐test to observe changes in their income as a consequence of the pandemic, and the Wilcoxon signed‐rank test alongside effect size analysis to detect any rise in experiences of violence and exploitation against women. The findings suggest a notable decrease in their employment scope due to the absence of previous jobs, low wages, insecure workplaces, and family constraints; a decline in earnings; and an increased incidence of violence against them. The research suggests designing reforms to improve the current situation of female migrants, who represent one of the most marginalized sections of society. Formalizing the labor market and ensuring proper registration of these women would enable them to gain access to social security benefits, pension schemes, and relief packages that are vital for their well‐being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Following the COVID-19 outbreak, there are concerns whether economies are becoming farther from equality and competency. While this matters to every economy, it is more crucial for developing ones who already suffer from income inequalities and lack of competency. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue. Design/methodology/approach: This study uses an administrative data from the Iran's Social Security Organization (ISSO) that provides insurance to workers entitled to the Labor Law of Iran. The data contain more than 7,000,000 workers. The authors assess heterogeneous impact of the first wave of the pandemic by firms' size and average payment. Findings: The authors' estimation results indicate that, following the initiation of the pandemic, the workers whose corresponding firms are smaller, overall, are more prone to the pandemic and are more likely to submit a request for unemployment benefits. However, the relation is neither homogeneous across sectors nor linear among micro-sized firms. Few sectors indicate a positive relationship between size and likelihood of request submission, including cultural activity, shoemaking and clothing sectors. Besides the size, the authors investigate whether pay grades could explain the probability of becoming unemployed after the pandemic. Results show that workers whose corresponding firms pay less are more likely to submit a request. This is robust within different sectors. Research limitations/implications: The ISSO dataset is not a panel, so the authors cannot employ methods of causal inferences. The authors' results should be seen as correlation; however, due to exogeneity and sharpness of the pandemic the result infers to some degree of causality. The data does not cover the informal sector, so the estimates are at lower boundary. Originality/value: Administrative data on unemployment benefits during COVID-19 show that the pandemic interferes with competition by forcing low-paid workers and small firms to exit the market. This is an alarm for the competition in every economy, specially developing ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the recent surge in employment figures in India, which is quite unexpected due to several economic disruptions, including COVID-19. This has raised numerous questions regarding the quality and conditions of these newly generated jobs. The findings clearly indicate a rise in the share of unpaid family workers, especially among women in rural areas, while the proportion of regular employment has declined in recent years. Additionally, there is a predominance of informal employment and workers in the informal sector, which is also on the rise. These trends indicate a rise in distress-driven employment and a partial recovery of the labour market post COVID-19. Addressing these challenges requires urgent policy interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resumen: Los estudios sobre plataformas digitales de trabajo indican que internet brinda nuevas oportunidades de ingresos en el mundo en desarrollo, pero no se ha investigado el uso de los medios en línea sin intermediarios en el sector informal. Utilizando datos de la etnografía digital y entrevistas con trabajadores en Indonesia, se examina cómo los mototaxistas y los trabajadores domésticos accedieron al mercado de trabajo por medios sociales durante la pandemia de COVID‐19 cuando las plataformas no estaban autorizadas a operar. Aunque los medios sociales ampliaban las oportunidades de empleo, el éxito dependía del tamaño de las redes sociales de los trabajadores y estaba limitado por los algoritmos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pre-Covid-19 world of work was rife with inequalities and difficulties, with more than 40 per cent of working-age South Africans unemployed. The majority of those in employment were barely able to eke out a living - between 20 per cent to 30 per cent were working in the informal economy, mostly without labour rights and social protection and earning low incomes that trapped them in poverty. The precarious nature of the South African labour market before the Covid-19 pandemic was characterised by casualisation, informalisation, and externalisation of work. This resulted in the reduction of the number of workers employed for definite periods and rising levels of precarious workers. This article investigates the precarious nature of work and the various work paradigms present in the South African labour market before the Covid-19 pandemic struck. New challenges arising from the Covid-19 pandemic and new forms of work in the South African labour market are also considered, together with measures taken to address precarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]