Early Lockdowns Saved Jobs in Government Responses to Pandemic

Governments that acted quickly to restrict social interactions to safeguard the health of their citizens in the pandemic also had the most success in protecting their economies, research by Bloomberg Economics shows.

The findings imply that there’s no trade-off between saving lives and saving jobs. While some countries had a slight advantage in relying less on services, the speed and determination with which authorities imposed lockdowns played the biggest part in reducing the Covid hit to output, economists Scott Johnson and Tom Orlik found.