This article assembles a novel dataset covering 42 countries from 1985 to 2020 to explore the impact of public spending on social protection on gross domestic product (GDP).

As a contribution to the national, regional and global understanding of the impact of COVID-19 on our already stressed society, SPII has produced a selection of the quarterly analysis of the critical unemployment figures, trends and trajectories from the last quarter of the Labour Force Survey to report before the impact of Covid- 19 would have had a significant impact. The broad definition of unemployment is 39.7%. It has risen by 1% from the last quarter and by 1.7% from the last year.