ReliefWeb

For more than a year, the COVID-19 pandemic has had severe negative effects on people, businesses and workers around the world as well as in Jordan. In Jordan national lockdowns, border closures, and movement res trictions have forced enterprises to close or reduce their businesses as well as to lay-off employees and reduce workers’ wages. In spite of the Jordanian governments’ efforts to mitigate the pandemic’s negative economic effects, the reported effects have been severe for businesses and workers.

The ILO, Fafo Institute for Labour and Social Research and the UNDP conducted a study on the pandemic’s impacts on Jordanian enterprises one year after the first lockdown was introduced.

The study is primarily based on data collected from a phone survey of more than 2,000 Jordanian enterprises in February and March 2021, complemented by individual interviews and focus group discussions with representatives from various industrial sectors, including business organisations, trade unions, enterprise owners, and workers. Furthermore, the report draws on data from a similar, albeit less extensive, phone survey carried out at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020. About 700 of the same enterprises from the first survey participated in the more recent one.

This policy brief2 presents the key findings of the study and recommendations based on the practical experiences of the ILO and UNDP.