Not All That It Seems : Narrowing of Gender Gaps in Employment during the Onset of COVID-19 in Indonesia

This paper studies the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Indonesia’s labor market by exploiting the exogeneous timing of the pandemic in a seasonal difference-in-differences framework. The analysis uses multiple rounds of Indonesia’s National Labor Force Survey from 2016 to 2020 to establish a pre-pandemic employment trend and then attribute any excess difference in employment outcomes from this trend as the estimated effect of the pandemic on individual employment outcomes. The results suggest that the pandemic has had mixed effects on the Indonesian labor market. While the pandemic has narrowed the gender gaps in employment participation through the “added worker effect” among women, it has also lowered the overall employment quality among both gender groups. The findings show that the increase in female employment is primarily driven by women in rural areas without high school education, entering informal work, agricultural employment, or unpaid family work. For men, the pandemic has had adverse impacts on their employment across the board in all sub-populations. Consistent with findings from other studies, steeper employment declines are observed in urban areas, particularly among males. Among those employed, both women and men work fewer hours and earn lower wages.