Vulnerability to COVID-19 unemployment in the Portuguese tourism and hospitality industry

• Autor(a) principal: Lopes, Ana Sofia
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Sargento, Ana, Carreira, Pedro
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.8/5857
• topic: Hospitality; Tourism; COVID-19; Job losses; Vulnerability; Portugal; Downturn effects

This paper seeks to address the immediate effects of the COVID-19 crisis in the Portuguese tourism and hospitality industry by examining whether some specific characteristics make people more vulnerable or more immune to unemployment. Using an extensive micro-level dataset of personal and job-related attributes containing all unemployed individuals in the Portuguese tourism and hospitality industry, a logit model with 56,142 observations is estimated to assess how each characteristic contributed to the unemployment odds during the COVID-19 crisis (until end-July 2020), relatively to the pre-COVID period. The most vulnerable workers to COVID-19 unemployment seem to be older, less educated, less qualified, women and residents in regions with a higher concentration of people and tourism activity. Moreover, the COVID-19 crisis is generating a new type of unemployment by also affecting those who were never unemployed before, with more stable jobs and more motivated at work, while reducing voluntary disruptions. Public effort should be made not only to increase workforce education but especially to reinforce job-specific skills. The COVID-19 crisis has broken traditional protective measures against unemployment and separated workers from their desired occupations, which justifies new and exceptional job preservation measures. Policy recommendations are given aiming at strengthening worker resilience and industry competitiveness in the most affected sub-sectors and regions. This study extends the current understanding of worker vulnerability to economic downturns. Herein, we used a three-level approach (combining socio-demographic, work-related and regional factors), capturing the immediate effects of the COVID-19 crisis and focusing on the tourism and hospitality industry (the hardest-hit sector worldwide).