The Nordic COVID 19 relief packages and non-standard workers-Policy learning and exchange of good practices from using universal and targeted measures

Abstract

The Nordic governments have – similar to the rest of Europe – launched a series of relief packages aimed to help companies and employees cope with the COVID crisis. This article examines how and whom the Nordic relief packages cover on the labour market. Analytically, we draw on the welfare and segmentation literature and assume that the types of relief packages in the individual Nordic countries – universal and targeted measures – impact certain groups‘ access to the relief packages and thus contribute to an institutional embedded (in)equality. We find that Iceland, Norway and Finland to a greater extent has relied on universal relief packages which seem to cover more groups of non-standard workers and thus implicitly seem to contribute to equality. By contrast, Denmark and Sweden have a greater extent relied on targeted relief packages that appear less inclusive, but often more generous than the other Nordic countries.