Abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic-induced health crisis and the measures taken by the authorities to limit its spread have led to significant contractions in GDP at the EU level, which may sooner or later lead to appropriate labour market adjustments. Obviously, the COVID-19 crisis has had effects on the labour market, by increasing the unemployment rate, especially among young people, income inequalities and, implicitly, the poverty rate. Hence, in this article we focus on expressing how the countries part of European Union can be clustered, based on some variables describing the labour market like the minimum wage, unemployment rate, poverty rate, GINI coefficient and the ratio of total COVID deaths over total confirmed cases within European Union member states for 2020, for which macro data was available.  The cluster analysis carried out led to the formation of five groups within the EU states that have implemented the minimum wage. Within each group, it was identified that some imbalances in labour market and welfare variables may negatively affect the COVID death rate. In the case of states with higher incomes, lower unemployment, but also with lower income inequalities, the incidence of COVID deaths is lower.