Spring Meetings

Migration is a phenomenon that attracts a lot of attention from the media, politicians, and the general public. We review the literature to distinguish myths from reality and see what we really know about how migration affects the labor markets, budgets, income inequality, and other aspects in both receiving and origin countries. We also look at the policies that countries can adopt to increase benefits and minimize the costs of migration.
 

Dmitriy Rozhkov Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF		Magali Pinat European Department, IMF

We will discuss the connection between robotization, employment rates, and workers’ views about the future of work. Using real data, we will show a positive association between robot penetration and job creation in Europe. Using survey information from workers in advanced and emerging countries, we will also cover how employees’ ages, education, income, and job security affect their sentiment toward robots. And perhaps the most important question: how workers think they can prepare for the future of work?

Labor markets in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) are characterized by high levels of informality. The presentation will discuss recent empirical work that explores how this feature affects the region’s ability to contain the Covid-19 outbreak through non-pharmaceutical interventions, and how it has shaped labor market adjustments. Local projection estimations show that countries where informality is commonplace experience smaller declines in cases after making containment more stringent. This appears to be linked to smaller reductions in mobility in high informality countries after the implementation of containment measures, which facilitates the spread of the disease. In addition, informal employment, which typically acts as buffer for cyclical fluctuations in activity, has fallen more steeply compared to formal employment during Covid. These findings highlight the difficult trade-offs facing Latin American policy makers as they tackle the health and economic impact of the pandemic.