The Effect of Covid-19 on Unemployment and Price Changes in Ethiopia: Evidence from Woldia Town “Does The Downward Sloping Philips Curve Hold True at Micro Level”

doi:10.7176/rjfa/12-15-01

Abstract

The massive spread of corona creates pressure on the general systems of the world countries. As stated in some studies corona virus affect every institution and individuals of the world in many aspects. Specifically it results in high unemployment, low level of production and significance rise in the nominal price of commodities. This study tries to explain the change in those economic variables to analyze the effect of Covid-19 on the living standard of households in Woldia town, Amhara regional state of Ethiopia using a data obtained from the north wollo zone planning commission which had been collected from sampled individuals monthly. Since the issue is so recent and absence of many conducted researches on this area, this article have no specific chapter for review of literature and gives more focus for data analysis part. Then descriptive analysis indicates the presence of valuable rise in unemployment and average price levels simultaneously and the OLS regression result disproved the applicability of Philips curve for the study area under the influence of COVID-19. Keywords: COVID-19, Philips curve, Regression analysis, Unemployment, Woldia Town, Ethiopia DOI: 10.7176/RJFA/12-15-01 Publication date: August 31 st 2021

Highlights

Unemployment status of Woldia Town under Covid-19Under this part of the study, descriptive summery is more applied to investigate about by what amount the level of unemployment and price have been changed starting from the coming of corona virus until the end of September
Introduction and OverviewCoronavirus can be considered as a respiratory disorder which quickly spreads from person to person when individuals by any means touch the infected persons of any other objects contaminated with the virus
It had been caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus and it belongs to the identical family of coronaviruses that caused the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak in 2003 and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome outbreak in 2012 (Habtamu, 2020)

Summary

Unemployment status of Woldia Town under Covid-19

Under this part of the study, descriptive summery is more applied to investigate about by what amount the level of unemployment and price have been changed starting from the coming of corona virus until the end of September. Those individuals who had been unemployed from the public sector are for temporal time since there is no customer to be served because of the stay at home command. As we can see from the pie chart presented above, the highest proportion of unemployment is arisen from the private sector since the greedy nature of company owners obliged them to fire many of their workers without any compromises and the inability of the government to share the internationally organization financed money for the owner of private companies This high unemployment increment leads to the fail of www.iiste.org production in every sector and creates shortage of good and service demanded by the society. Individuals who engaged in self-employment like electronic shops, street vending and petty traders and any consultancy providing individual became obliged to go back to their rural hometown for the sake of sustaining their life

Pepper

Average tariff for transportation from Woldia town to other nearby town

Lentil

Findings

Conclusion