Las opiniones contenidas en el presente documento son responsabilidad exclusiva de los autores y no comprometen al Banco de la República ni a su Junta Directiva. Los errores y omisiones en este trabajo son responsabilidad de los autores Resumen En este trabajo evaluamos el efecto de la pandemia de Covid-19 y las restricciones de movilidad sectoriales en el mercado laboral colombiano. Para identificar el efecto de estas políticas, explotamos la variación en el empleo y salarios en los sectores excluidos y no excluidos de las restricciones a la movilidad, así como el momento de su implementación. Las restricciones sectoriales a la movilidad tienen efectos negativos en el empleo, representando aproximadamente una cuarta parte de la pérdida total de empleo entre febrero y abril de 2020. Los patrones regionales de propagación de la enfermedad y otros componentes epidemiológicos y económicos, que afectaron al país durante este período, representan las tres cuartas partes restantes de la pérdida de empleos. Por lo tanto, debemos esperar importantes pérdidas de empleo incluso en ausencia de dichas restricciones. No encontramos un efecto significativo en el promedio de horas trabajadas o los salarios, lo que indica que la mayor parte del ajuste del mercado laboral tuvo lugar en el margen extensivo (empleos). Además, las restricciones a la movilidad sectoriales afectan principalmente a los trabajadores asalariados, mientras que el trabajo por cuenta propia responde principalmente a la propagación de la enfermedad.

The opinions contained in this document are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not commit Banco de la República or its Board of Directors.

We assess the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and particularly the sectorspecific mobility restrictions on the Colombian labour market. We exploit the sectoral and temporal variation of the restriction policies to identify their effect. Mobility restrictions significantly reduced employment, accounting for approximately a quarter of the total job loss between February and April of 2020. The remaining three quarters of the job losses could be attributed to the disease's regional patterns and other epidemiological and economic factors affecting the whole country. Therefore, we should expect important employment losses even in the absence of such restrictions. We also assess the effect of restrictions on the intensive margin, finding negative, although smaller effects on the number of hours worked and wages. Most of the employment effect is driven by salaried workers, while self-employment was more responsive to the disease spread. Finally, we find that women are disproportionally affected: mobility restrictions account for a third of the recent increase of the gender gap in salaried employment.

This paper assesses whether the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated automation in developing countries. We studied the case of Colombia, a country with low R&D and productivity and with high labor informality and unemployment. We estimated event-study models to assess the differential effect of the pandemic on job openings and salaried employment by the potential degree of automation of each occupation. Our results suggest that both vacancies and salaried employment fell more in highly automatable occupations during the pandemic and have since experienced a slower recovery. The effect of the pandemic on automation is mostly driven by sectors that were affected by mobility restrictions. We also found heterogeneous effects by age and gender. The acceleration of automation is mainly affecting the labor market for females and individuals over the age of 40. Finally, we explored the differential effect on occupations with wages around the minimum wage. We found that occupations with wages close to the minimum wage exhibit the highest effect, especially at the onset of the pandemic.