The youth and women were among the most vulnerable to job losses in Southeast Asia during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, a report released by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said.
The report, A Crisis Like No Other-COVID-19 and Labor Markets in Southeast Asia, finds that people ages 15 to 24, who represent less than 15 percent of the workforce in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, accounted for as much as 45 percent of job losses at the height of the pandemic in 2020.
Specifically, in the Philippines, the share of youth in job losses is 23 percent, while approximately one out of four young women in the country were not in employment, education or training.
“In the Philippines, nearly one out of four women lost their jobs in sales and service occupations,” the report said.
In Thailand, women accounted for 60 percent of all job losses, including 90 percent in manufacturing, in the second quarter of 2020.
ADB said the pandemic also exacerbated growing inequalities between skilled and unskilled workers, hurting low-skilled as well as middle-skilled workers, whose jobs face automation or being moved elsewhere. Informal, self-employed, temporary and migrant workers were among the most vulnerable groups.
“Despite unprecedented government responses, COVID-19 has exposed significant social protection gaps associated with high and persistent informality across the region,” Ramesh Subramaniam, ADB director general for Southeast Asia, said.
“It also has provided an opportunity for countries to address these gaps and expand coverage to new beneficiaries and excluded groups. As recovery takes hold, the focus of fiscal policy can shift more strongly from relief to stimulus, and from stimulus to structural investments that will promote sustained and inclusive growth,” Subramaniam added.
The region was hard hit during the second quarter of 2020, when government containment measures were at their most severe, as one out of five workers in the Philippines lost jobs or left the workforce altogether. About 90 percent of Vietnamese who lost their jobs stopped looking for new employment, as did 60 percent of Indonesians and 40 percent of Malaysians. – Angela Celis
