This article traces income and employment changes through various phases of the lockdown based on primary data. It analyses the coping strategies of people in response to fall in their income. The article reveals that there was a large drop in income and employment with the announcement of lockdown. While there is some recovery with easing of the lockdown, the income at the time of survey is still substantially lower than its pre-lockdown level. Casual labour households with the largest fall in income and employment are the most affected. Income and employment losses are also higher among Scheduled Caste (SC) and Other Backward Caste (OBC) households. In the absence of any income, the households either had to live off their savings or had to borrow money for their basic needs. With rapidly depleting savings, borrowing approached its limits, and with slow recovery of income, households may need substantial government assistance to save them from deprivation.

This paper analyzes the differential impact of COVID-19 by occupation in Mansa, Punjab, India. Propensity score matching is used to analyze the difference in income recovery rates of permissible and restricted occupations based on restrictions in the initial period of the lockdown. Analysis of income of 55 randomly selected households shows that the restricted occupations lagged in their recovery rate after six months of lockdown.

The paper examines employment of women in rural Punjab for the period 1993–1994 to 2011–2012. The analysis is done using the unit-level data for five employment rounds of NSS. The NSS rounds prior to 2009–2010 were based on National Classification of Occupation (NCO) 1968, whereas the latest two rounds use NCO 2004. The paper uses the concordance tables (with minor adjustments) to make all rounds comparable. The purpose of the exercise is to examine participation rates and analyze occupational pattern among rural women in the context of growth and structural change in the Punjab economy. The paper finds that structural change has neither improved labour market participation nor quality of employment among rural women during the last two decades. The analysis provides evidence of downward occupational mobility among all women and finds that the caste attribute further intensifies such downward trend, making SC women worse off in terms of occupational outcomes.

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The study examines changes in earnings of the workers over 1 year. The results show differential impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on income of the workers. The findings suggest that workers, whose occupations were restricted in the initial phase of lockdown, continue to do worse even after lifting the restrictions. Females, casual workers and the less educated are among the worst affected by the economic shock. They continue to lag behind with no sign of catching up with other groups. The study asks for short- and long-term policy measures to address the issue.