Impacts of COVID‐19 pandemic on the labour market in the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands

This thesis is focused on the analysis of the impacts of Covid-19 pandemic on the labour markets of four selected European countries – the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. The design of Job Retention schemes introduced by the governments of selected economies to mitigate the impacts of Coronavirus recession and the most affected groups are examined. The main objective of this research is to find out whether there is a correlation between the growth of unemployment rate and the number of positive cases. Due to the limitation of the testing methodology that differs from each selected country, the empirical research focuses only on the Czech Republic. Based on several econometric models using different estimation methods, there seems to be no or negligible effect of the number of positive Covid-19 cases on the unemployment rate in the Czech Republic. Since the most vulnerable groups are women, young and less educated people, the Job Retention schemes should mainly support these workers.