On March 11th, Eurofound released a new report assessing the employment impacts of the COVID-19 crisis. The main purposes of the report are to provide an updated assessment of the labour market impact of the pandemic in different EU Member States, to offer insights on the impact of the widespread shift to telework, and to assess in more detail the measures implemented across the EU.
The report feeds from the Eurofound COVID-19 EU Policy Watch, the ‘Living, working and COVID-19’ survey results, and Eurofound’s regular monitoring of labour market trends. It also builds on a first Eurofound report from June 2020 mapping the initial impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on the labour market.
These are some key findings of the report:
- Young people were most impacted by reductions in employment and furloughing. The same is true for women: the COVID-19 pandemic mainly affected the more female-dominated sectors. This was somewhat balanced by a rising demand for workers in other female-dominated sectors.
- By July 2020, nearly 50% of the EU workforce had moved to exclusive or partial telework. As this option is not available to all, this opens up new labour market gulfs. This contributed to an increased impact on the lowest paid workers.
Eurodiaconia has also contributed to assessing the wide impacts of the pandemic. For instance, our latest publication titled “The Future of Social Services Report of the High-Level Group on Social Services”. This report investigates the main trends, challenges and opportunities in social service provision by not-for-profit service providers, from three main angles: the implementation of EU legal and policy frameworks; the funding systems and sources; and challenges intrinsic to the sector, such as the recruitment and retention of qualified workforce, the increased digitalisation of services and the growing complexity of users’ needs. You can read our full report here. For more information, you can also visit our COVID-19 thematic website.