Ep 3: A V-Shaped Recovery in Employment, Income, and Consumption?

Prof. Marianne Bertrand of Chicago Booth and Dr. Kaushik Krishnan, Chief Economist at CMIE, discuss to what extent India is showing a V-shaped recovery. 

"V-shaped recovery" and "green shoots" are being flung around in newspapers and discussions everywhere. But how were India's households affected economically during the lockdown? And to what extent have their employment, income, and consumption levels recovered since then?

To better answer these questions, Marianne Kaushik join me in discussing their findings from analyzing CMIE's household surveys.  They and a team of two other economists- Prof. Rebecca Dizon-Ross of Booth and Prof. Heather Schofield of UPenn, have published a series of op-eds (linked below) that shed light on how employment, income, and consumption of Indian households have behaved during and post-lockdown. 

Their first oped, published in May, highlighted the economic carnage Covid19 and the lockdown brought about. Since then, they have conducted a more extensive study of how the economic fundamentals of households have recovered. While CMIE's unemployment levels are back to pre-pandemic levels by July, all's not well in employment, as the Employment-to-population ratio continued to be lower than before post-lockdown. However, while incomes have rebounded dramatically post-lockdown, they continue to be 25% lower year-on-year in June, and consumption of key items such as dairy/eggs/meat and other food items have also registered some recovery but not fully by August. We explore what these different set of results, along with other findings from the study, means for a V-shaped recovery for India.

Show Notes:

Most Recent Op-ed (*Highly Encouraged Reading and Basis for this episode!*): https://www.chicagobooth.edu/research/rustandy/blog/2020/employment-income-and-consumption-in-india-during-and-after-the-lockdown

Business Standard's abridged version of the Oped, v1: https://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/employment-income-in-india-during-and-after-lockdown-a-v-shape-recovery-120112601501_1.html

First Op-ed (published in May): https://www.chicagobooth.edu/research/rustandy/blog/2020/how-are-indian-households-coping-under-the-covid19-lockdown

Timestamps:
0.00: Intro 
4.15: Understanding CMIE's survey mechanism and scope, and how they managed to survey during the lockdown 
18.59: Discussion of May Oped's findings of income losses and unemployment 
24.59: Recovery in unemployment, but continued concerns for the employment 
33.26: Quick chat about growth in GST revenues 
41.30: Income transitions during and post-lockdown 
53.47: Consumption trends  
58.39: What do the findings mean for a V-shaped recovery? What's a reasonable timeline for a recovery? 
1.05.05: Policy responses (MGNREGA and EPFO wage subsidy)