WORKERS IN THE TIME OF COVID-19 – Round II of the National Study on Informal Workers – National Factsheet – ActionAid India
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WORKERS IN THE TIME OF COVID-19 – Round II of the National Study on Informal Workers – National Factsheet

Update: Update: October 28, 2020

As part of its longitudinal study on the impact of COVID-19 and the lockdown on informal workers, ActionAid Association is conducting a series of national surveys. The current second round of the survey was carried out from 23rd August 2020 to 8th September 2020, across 23 states and five Union Territories. The survey took place during Unlock 3.0, the third phase of the government’s phase-wise reopening of the post coronavirus lockdown. More than 16,900 workers were interviewed in 402 districts, over half the number of districts in the country. Interactions covered a range of issues regarding the status of their livelihoods and wages, savings and expenditure, and access to social security schemes and other entitlements.

The first round of the national survey was conducted in the last phase of the lockdown between 14th May 2020 and 22nd May 2020. At the time, we had interviewed over 11,530 workers across 21 states in 293 source and 393 destination districts. The findings highlighted acute distress among informal workers, especially migrant workers, with extremely high levels of livelihood loss (78%) and indebtedness (53%). More than half of the migrant workers reported that they were stranded for over a month and nearly three-fifths said that they had to vacate their housing during the lockdown.