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Covid-19 analyses

A series of background briefings on the policy issues arising from the Covid-19 pandemic. For further discussion papers, blogs and research on this subject visit the Covid-19 topic hub.

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The self-employment trap?

Around two-in-five self-employed workers would switch to a salaried job if they could secure the same income, the latest Covid-19 analysis reveals.
Image from CEP Covid series cover. Designer: Raphael Whittle
Real-time updates on the UK economy

Josh De Lyon and Swati Dhingra examine how labour shortages are affecting UK firms, with half reporting difficulty recruiting new workers while around one in five firms report issues retaining existing staff.

All Covid-19 analyses

CEP Covid-19 analysis
The self-employment trap?

The seventh LSE-CEP survey of the self-employed was undertaken in June 2023. The results revealed that the self-employed are still in the doldrums and their incomes and activity have not resumed to pre-pandemic levels. T...Read more...

Robert Blackburn, Stephen Machin and Maria Ventura

25 September 2023

CEP Covid-19 analysis
From Covid-19 to collapse? The self-employed and the cost of living crisis

The sixth LSE-CEP survey of the self-employed was undertaken in November 2022 and found that the downward trend in income levels of the self-employed reported in May 2022 has continued. The cost of living crisis is hitti...Read more...

Robert Blackburn, Stephen Machin and Maria Ventura

10 February 2023

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Covid-19 and the self-employed - A two year update

The fifth LSE-CEP survey of the self-employed of May 2022 provides an up to date picture of how Covid-19 and its aftermath keep affecting the self-employed. The findings show that, although working on average a little mo...Read more...

Robert Blackburn, Stephen Machin and Maria Ventura

28 July 2022

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Covid-19 and local crime rates in England and Wales - two years into the pandemic

We analyse how crime trends evolved during the Covid-19 pandemic leveraging public data on local crimes. Police have recorded fewer crimes overall during the pandemic, and the decrease is driven by a large decrease in ac...Read more...

Shubhangi Agrawal, Tom Kirchmaier and Carmen Villa-Llera

17 March 2022

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Real-time updates on the UK economy: trends, expectations and implications from business survey data

Covid-19 has caused substantial shocks to the UK economy, highlighting a need for real-time data to analyse trends. We use monthly business survey data from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) to document recent ...Read more...

Josh De Lyon and Swati Dhingra

15 December 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Covid-19 and the self-employed - 18 months into the crisis

A year and a half into the Covid-19 pandemic, growth and economic recovery are the latest watchwords amongst labour market commentators in the UK. In this report we continue to monitor the situation of the self-employed ...Read more...

Robert Blackburn, Stephen Machin and Maria Ventura

18 November 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
The business response to Covid-19 one year on: findings from the second wave of the CEP-CBI survey on technology adoption

We present new data from a survey of 425 UK businesses conducted in July 2021 in partnership with the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), which seeks to understand the ways in which firms have innovated one year on ...Read more...

Juliana Oliveira-Cunha, Capucine Riom and Anna Valero

10 November 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Learning loss since lockdown: variation across the home nations

Empirical analysis of secondary microdata, bespoke social mobility surveys and administrative school attendance data reveal the extent of learning losses that have evolved in the four nations of the UK over the year of t...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major, Andrew Eyles and Stephen Machin

7 July 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
City of dreams no more, a year on: worklessness and active labour market policies in urban India

This report provides key findings from a new field survey to assess the long-term impact of Covid-19 on urban workers in low-income areas of India. The survey took place during February and March 2021, just before the s...Read more...

Swati Dhingra and Fjolla Kondirolli

2 July 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
The impacts of Covid-19 and Brexit on the UK economy: early evidence in 2021

We use real-time firm survey data to describe trends in the UK economy in early 2021. As of April 2021, business activity and expectations for the future have improved. However, real wage growth is down and firms are rep...Read more...

Josh De Lyon and Swati Dhingra

6 May 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
The pandemic and the housing market: a British story

When Covid-19 struck, the British housing market went into free-fall. Land Registry data show prices, transactions and construction all tumbled. But demand was boosted both by the general measures taken to support the ec...Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Christian A. L. Hilber and Olivier Schöni

30 March 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Covid-19 and the self-employed - ten months into the crisis

Almost a year into the Covid-19 crisis, it has become widely acknowledged that UK self-employment has been particularly hard hit. Here we continue our series investigating the experience of self-employed workers througho...Read more...

Jack Blundell, Stephen Machin and Maria Ventura

2 March 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Recovering from the first Covid-19 lockdown: Economic impacts of the UK's Eat Out to Help Out scheme

We evaluate some of the economic impacts of the UK's Eat Out to Help Out (EOTHO) scheme on the food service sector. EOTHO subsidised the cost of eating out, with a 50% discount Mondays to Wednesdays in August 2020. We ex...Read more...

Nicolás González-Pampillón, Gonzalo Nunez-Chaim and Katharina Ziegler

10 February 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Prices and inflation in a pandemic - a micro data approach

The Covid-19 lockdowns and recession are the most exceptional economic events in living memory and will impact the economy for years to come. One vital channel is via price changes. Price rises and cuts alter real wages,...Read more...

Richard Davies

4 February 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
A major wave of UK business closures by April 2021? The scale of the problem and what can be done

This report presents an analysis of the financial health of UK businesses, which shows that immediate action is needed to prevent a wave of corporate failure in early April. We cannot delay action. Now is also the moment...Read more...

Peter Lambert and John Van Reenen

27 January 2021

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Labour market shocks during the Covid-19 pandemic: inequalities and child outcomes

We study the effect of negative labour market shocks borne by parents during the Covid-19 crisis on resource and time investments in children and the channels through which negative labour market shocks experienced by pa...Read more...

Claudia Hupkau, Ingo Isphording, Stephen Machin and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela

18 December 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Innovation for a strong and sustainable recovery

In the recovery from Covid-19, innovation and diffusion will be key to addressing several structural challenges facing the UK economy. These include improving the UK�s longstanding poor productivity performance, addres...Read more...

Ralf Martin, Sam Unsworth, Anna Valero and Dennis Verhoeven

18 December 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Covid-19 and changing crime trends in England and Wales

We document changing crime trends in England and Wales in the context of the current global pandemic. During the first lockdown that span from mid-March to mid-May 2020 there was a decrease in all crime categories except...Read more...

Tom Kirchmaier and Carmen Villa-Llera

17 December 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Covid-19 and the self-employed: six months into the crisis

Six months after Covid-19 first hit, it is clear that it is the greatest economic crisis of the modern age. The economy has contracted far more rapidly than in previous crises, with GDP dropping by a record 19.5 per cent...Read more...

Jack Blundell, Stephen Machin and Maria Ventura

10 November 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Generation COVID: emerging work and education inequalities

The purpose of this brief paper is to present initial findings from the recently collected LSE-CEP Social Mobility survey, which was undertaken as part of our UKRI project ‘Generation COVID and Social Mobility: Evidence ...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major, Andrew Eyles and Stephen Machin

26 October 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Jobs for a strong and sustainable recovery from Covid-19

The UK's future economic, social and environmental prosperity will be shaped by how it deals with, and recovers from, the impact of Covid-19. This paper sets out coordinated net-zero-aligned investments which the UK can ...Read more...

Pia Andres, Giorgia Cecchinato, Penny Mealy, Charlotte Taylor, Sam Unsworth and Anna Valero

19 October 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
The business response to Covid-19: the CEP-CBI survey on technology adoption

We present new data from a survey of 375 UK businesses conducted in July 2020 in partnership with the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), which seeks to understand the way in which firms have innovated in response t...Read more...

Capucine Riom and Anna Valero

30 September 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
City of dreams no more: the impact of Covid-19 on urban workers in India

Many developing economies have large informal sectors and growing urban youth populations, who lack basic social protections at work. The CEP surveyed 8,500 workers aged 18 to 40 in urban India to understand their experi...Read more...

Shania Bhalotia, Swati Dhingra and Fjolla Kondirolli

1 September 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
What can previous recessions tell us about the Covid-19 downturn?

The labour market effects of the Covid-19 crisis measured as of June 2020 are compared with the three most recent UK recessions: the early 1980s, the early 1990s, and the downturn induced by the global financial crisis i...Read more...

Brian Bell, Mihai Codreanu and Stephen Machin

17 August 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Covid-19 and Brexit: Real-time updates on business performance in the United Kingdom

Nearly four months have passed since the UK went into lockdown to restrict the spread of Covid-19. The health effects have been severe, and an inevitable consequence of the lockdown was a huge 20 per cent decline in GDP ...Read more...

Josh De Lyon and Swati Dhingra

29 July 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Strategy, investment and policy for a strong and sustainable recovery: an action plan

The UK and the world have suffered disruption and hardship from the COVID-19 pandemic on an immense scale. Together with the tragic consequences of the health crisis, there is now a real risk of protracted global depress...Read more...

Nick Robins, James Rydge, Nicholas Stern, Sam Unsworth, Anna Valero and Dimitri Zenghelis

2 July 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Covid-19 and social mobility

Governments are having to balance short- and long-term interests, and the trade-offs they generate, as they try to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. Social distancing measures may limit the number of immediate deaths f...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin

28 May 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Self-employment in the Covid-19 crisis

The Covid-19 shock is one of the largest economic shocks that has taken place in living memory. The crisis has served to highlight the challenges governments face in extending social insurance to self-employed workers, f...Read more...

Jack Blundell and Stephen Machin

22 May 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Work, care and gender during the Covid-19 crisis

The Covid-19 crisis has especially hit service sectors with frequent social interactions, in which women are over-represented. At the same time, if not directly subject to the lock-down, women are more likely to hold job...Read more...

Claudia Hupkau and Barbara Petrongolo

14 May 2020

CEP Covid-19 analysis
Covid-19 school shutdowns: what will they do to our children's education?

Evidence from unexpected temporary school closures and reduced instruction time suggests school closures will reduce educational achievement, both in the short and long term. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are ...Read more...

Andrew Eyles, Stephen Gibbons and Piero Montebruno

7 May 2020