Africa: COVID-19 income loss

The African continent lost 10.7 percent of its labor income in the first three quarters of 2020 due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Labor income loss in the northernmost region accounted for 11.8 percent of the total labor income, while the rest of the African continent showed a 10.2 percent loss in income from labor. As of the investigated period, the whole region was estimated to have lost a labor income of 115 billion U.S. dollars.

Share of labor income lost during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in Africa from the 1st quarter of 2020 to the 3rd quarter of 2020, by sub-region

Characteristic	Labor income loss as share of labor income
Sub-Saharan Africa	10.2%
Northern Africa	11.8%
Africa	10.7%

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Release date

September 2020

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Region

Africa

Survey time period

Q1 to Q3 2020

Special properties

Estimates as of September 23, 2020

Supplementary notes

Labor income losses are due to the loss of working hours.

The source estimated the values based on a model namely "nowcasting model".

Values were calculated taking employment levels of the fourth quarter of 2019 as the baseline.

Losses of labor income in billions are rounded up to the nearest 5 billion. Due to rounding, some values for the sub-region may not add up to the corresponding region.

To demonstrate the magnitude of the predicted hours lost, the equivalent losses in full time jobs are introduced. They are calculated based on the assumption that decreases in working hours were borne entirely and comprehensively by a group of full-time workers, while the rest of the workers experienced no reduction in working hours.

Full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs data that is more than 50 million are rounded up to five million, while the values lower than the threshold are rounded to the closest million.

According to the source, the figures should not be interpreted as number of jobs lost or actual increase in unemployment,

A benchmark of working hours before the pandemic was used to compute the FTEs of working hours percentage-drops.

Full-time jobs are considered as those with a workload of 48 hours per week.

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