Estimating Earnings Losses of Migrant Workers Due to COVID-19
- PDF / 703,838 Bytes
- 19 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 51 Downloads / 179 Views
Estimating Earnings Losses of Migrant Workers Due to COVID‑19 Manolo I. Abella1,2 · S. K. Sasikumar3 Accepted: 2 September 2020 © Indian Society of Labour Economics 2020
Abstract While the wide-ranging impact of COVID-19 on incomes and livelihoods of people around the world will take some time to become known and understood, it is already clear that those who are in manual, mostly low-wage, occupations are among the worst-hit workers. This paper uses data from a sample survey of migrant workers to come up with useful parameters for estimating the potential losses from possible retrenchment of migrant workers due to the pandemic. The paper employs a simple estimation model using parameters derived from data collected from a KNOMADILO survey of low-skilled migrant workers in the India–Saudi Arabia migration corridor, conducted during 2016–2017. An important finding is that the aggregate losses that low-skilled Indian workers in Saudi Arabia are likely to incur due to COVID-19-related retrenchment may be as high as 21% of their expected earnings. Adding recruitment costs can push up their losses to 36% of expected or potential earnings, while the aggregate remittances to their families could drop by USD 2 billion. Keywords COVID-19 · Labour migration · Earning loss of migrant workers · IndiaGulf migration · KNOMAD-ILO surveys
1 Introduction It will be a while before the full impact of COVID-19 on incomes and livelihoods of people around the world becomes known and understood, but it is already obvious that those in manual, mostly low-wage, occupations are among the workers most adversely affected. They include not only those who, by the nature of their jobs, are * S. K. Sasikumar [email protected] 1
ILO International Migration Programme, Geneva, Switzerland
2
World Bank-KNOMAD Labour Migration, Washington, USA
3
V.V. Giri National Labour Institute, Noida, India
13
Vol.:(0123456789) ISLE
The Indian Journal of Labour Economics
more exposed to the virus than others, such as hospital and nursing home workers and public transport drivers, but also many others who are employed in industries that have suffered from the overall economic meltdown. These encompass a wide variety of occupations from itinerant vendors, store clerks and restaurant workers, to manufacturing workers, farmers and fishermen, traders and truckers, public sanitation workers and the like. In more economically advanced countries, a significant proportion of those employed in these occupations are foreign migrant workers who enjoy few rights, least of all to any job security, and are thus the most likely to have been the first to be laid off, to suffer pay cuts, or not to have been paid at all for previous work (Abella 2020; World Bank - KNOMAD 2020a). In the Gulf countries, these migrant workers make up most of those employed in the private sector and thus constitute the bulk of the total workforce. This paper proposes, by way of example, a method for quantitatively assessing the likely impact of the economic crisis on migrant worke
Data Loading...
