The Effect of COVID-19 on the Quality of Employment in Colombia

Abstract This article analyses the effect of COVID-19 on the quality of employment in Colombia. Based on the construction of two job quality indexes, we estimate a pseudo-panel-ordered probit model correcting for measurement errors and the endogeneity of education. Depending on the job quality index, our results show that the probability of having a low-quality job increases between 1.6 and 27.8 percent points (p.p). In contrast, the probability of having a high-quality job decreases by 8.3 and 21.4 p.p. due to COVID-19. Also, people with higher levels of education are more likely to have high-quality jobs in Colombia; being a Venezuelan immigrant reduces the probability of having quality jobs, and being a woman has different effects depending on the index.