Losing Livelihoods:The Labor Market Impacts of COVID-19 in BangladeshAbstract This paper provides early insights into the labor market impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis in Bangladesh, with a special focus on three especially vulnerable areas: poor areas in Dhaka and Chittagong City Corporations and Coxs Bazar district. We build on household surveys collected before the crisis and phone monitoring surveys collected after the start of the crisis to shed light on the implications of COVID-19 for employment and earnings. The findings presented here indicate substantial labor market impacts both at the extensive and intensive margin, with important variation across areas and gender, largely due to the nature of occupations affected by the crisis. The findings also point to substantial uncertainty about job prospects.Keywords: COVID-19, coronavirus, Dhaka, Chittagong, Coxs Bazar, labor market, poverty JEL codes: DI, 115, 131, J2J46The world Bank group. Corresponding author: M.E. genoni (mgenoniworldbank.org). The authors are gratefuI to the editor and referees for their helpful comments, we also thank Claudia Berg, Luz Carazo, Joaquin Endara, arshia haque, and flavio riva for excellent research assistance and valuable inputs into survey design and implementation, we also thank Benu Bidani, suleiman namara, and yutaka yoshino for their useful comments and guidance. The Coxs Bazar Panel survey (CBPs) is the result of a partnership between the yale Macmillan Center Program on refugees, forced Displacement, and humanitarian responses (yale Macmillan PrfDhr), the gender & adolescence: global Evidence (gagE) program, the Poverty and Equity global Practice of the world Bank, and the state and Peacebuilding fund (sPf) administered by the world Bank. The SPF is a global fund to finance critical development operations and analysis in situations of fragility, conflict, and violence. The sPf7 is suppoixed by australia, Denmark, germany, The netherlands, norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and The United Kingdom, as well as IBRD. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect the views of the World Bank, the Executive Directors of the World Bank, or the governments they represent. All errors and omissions are our own.Figure 8. Coxs Bazar district - Comparison of pre-crisis and lockdown earning levels for different employment types Baseline rates Crisis impacted rates (March-May 2020)High exposureLow exposureMonthly salaried wage workers in Coxs Bazar have been relatively protected in terms of income losses, reporting 15-19 percent reductions across high- and low-exposure hosts.given the largely informal nature of the jobs held by the majority of active and temporarily absent workers who report themselves as being employed, it is difficult to predict how fully this employment will translate into active jobs post-lockdown. This is reflected in the widespread uncertainty that respondents from Dhaka and Chittagong reported about keeping jobs and businesses running (figure 9). Only 58 percent of active workers thought they would be able to keep their job or activity running in the month following the survey. In Chittagong, 69 percent of workers expected to continue working. Compared to Chittagong, Dhaka shows a much higher degree of uncertainty about employment prospects, with only 48 percent of workers thinking they would keep their income-generating activity, slum residents show higher levels of uncertainty: 53 percent of workers in slums expected to remain at their jobs, compared to 64 percent in non-slum areas.Females have been disproportionately affected due to their overall lower participation in the labor market and their occupationsgiven the low rates of female labor force participation, women appear to be disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 crisis and have experienced relatively higher job losses. In Dhaka and Chittagong, these have translated into women leaving the labor force, while in Coxs Bazar, women have been more likely to look for work.Figure 9. Dhaka and Chittagong - Expectations about keeping current employment next month(% of adults who worked in the past week)In Dhaka and Chittagong, the percentage of males and females stopping work between March 25 and the interview date was 23 and 24 percent, respectively, however, given their low participation in the labor force, womens employment experienced a larger reduction. The share of actual job losses among those stopping work was not very different by gender, but men were more likely to actively look for another job while women were more likely to exit the labor market. Only 2 in 10 men stopping active work exited the labor force, compared to more than I in 3 women in Dhaka and Chittagong (figure 10). Unemployed . Temporarily absent . InactiveFigure 11. Coxs Bazar district - increasing unemployment rates by gender and exposure area16.1*F