The World Bank (March 2021) The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered one of the largest economic downturns since the Great Depression. Beyond its devastating effect on health, morbidity, and mortality, the pandemic shook economies and labor markets around the globe, leaving no firm, worker, and household untouched. Governments responded to the crisis with a series of public health and containment measures that deeply affected societies and economies, including the supply and demand for goods, capital, and labor. These were accompanied by a series of social, financial, and macroeconomic policies aimed at mitigating the economic effects of the crisis. In low- (LICs) and middle-income (MICs) countries alone, over 1,300 labor market and social protection interventions have been introduced since the start of the pandemic.1 These policies often included a mix of social assistance, social insurance, and labor market interventions, with 98 percent of countries in the sample announcing at least one labor market policy or one social assistance policy, and 60 percent announcing at least one social insurance policy.