Going Viral: COVID-19 and the Accelerated Transformation of Jobs in Latin America and the Caribbean

Description

COVID-19 started as a health emergency, but it is rapidly evolving into an employment crisis. There isstill uncertainty on how severe the economic impact of the pandemic will be. As things go, however, the dragon the region's employment could last longer than the epidemic itself. Beyond the immediate impacts on thelevel of employment, the crisis is deepening and accelerating the transformation of jobs, bringing the futurecloser. Going Viral: COVID-19 and the Accelerated Transformation of Jobs in Latin America and the Caribbean focuses on recent trends in the economies of the region that have been significantly changing the labor market: premature deindustrialization, the servicification of the economy, and the changing skill requirements of jobs as automation advances.The findings of this report have important implications for economic policy. Some of these implications arerelated to the productivity challenges that Latin America and the Caribbean was already facing after the end ofthe "Golden Decade+? in 2013. Other policy implications see their relevance enhanced by the COVID-19 crisis.As sectors are impacted in different ways, as new technologies are developed and adopted, and as workingremotely becomes more common, governments need to respond in ways that support a smooth transformationof jobs--one that is socially acceptable and that contributes to productivity growth, including investingin the human capital of the workforce. The accelerated transformation of jobs also calls for a rethinking of labor regulations and social protection policies. The institutional architecture geared to wage earners in the formal sector is quickly becoming outdated. The report calls for the flexible regulation of the emerging forms of work, in a way that encourages employment and supports formalization, thereby expanding the coverage of social protection. to larger segments