The impact of the COVID-19 crisis on rural youth from Bihar and Jharkhand
The first wave of COVID-19 in India led to widespread job losses and return migration among rural youth, particularly affecting women. A year later, this study shows that formal employment recovery remained limited and a job-matching app showed minimal impact, highlighting the need for stronger government support to reconnect youth with urban job markets.
Authors
Apurav Yash Bhatiya
Associate Professor, Economics, University of Birmingham
Clément Imbert
Associate Professor, University of WarwickMaximilian Lohnert
Research Manager, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action LabPoonam Panda
Research Associate, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab
Roland Rathelot
Researcher, University of Warwick-
Chakravorty-et-al-Policy-Brief-June-2021.pdf
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- The first wave of COVID-19 in India severely impacted workers' livelihoods, prompting widespread return migration. Understanding the first wave's long-term effects is critical as the country faces the second wave's aftermath.
- This study tracks the employment and migration changes of 2,260 rural youth from Bihar and Jharkhand—trainees of the DDU-GKY vocational programme—over one year since the March 2020 lockdown.
- Most youths with formal pre-lockdown jobs lost them in the pandemic and remained out of formal employment a year later. Many returned home and had not remigrated. While many men entered informal work and continued job searches, most women exited the labour force for domestic duties. Many young men were still willing to migrate out of state a year after the pandemic started, but most women planned to stay home.
- An experimental evaluation of the Yuva Sampark job-matching app showed low usage and no significant impact on job applications or employment outcomes.
- The findings suggest that connecting rural youth to formal urban jobs requires more active government support, such as scaling up DDU-GKY, which successfully placed many youths, including women, before the pandemic.