COVID-19: A Crisis of the Female Self-Employed

We investigate how the economic consequences of the pandemic, and of the government-mandated measures to contain its spread, affected the self-employed relative to employed individuals in Germany and, secondly, to what extent the female self-employed were more strongly hit than their male counterparts. For our analysis, we use representative, real-time survey data where respondents are asked about their situation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings indicate that self-employed individuals were much more likely to suffer income losses than employees. Among the self-employed, women were 35% more likely to experience income losses than men, as women are disproportionately working in industries that are more severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. We conclude that future policy measures intended to mitigate such shocks should account for this variation in economic hardship.