Variations in the ability to perform virtual or telework have emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic as a source of differences in how workers adjusted to the consequent economic and social shock. Given the long-lasting nature of the pandemic and the length of the mobility restrictions in Latin America and the Caribbean, a critical question is how the pandemic affected the time use (and well-being) of low-skilled working women in the medium term, based on the type of job they had pre-pandemic—one that could adapt to virtuality (‘virtual jobs’) or one that must be done in-person (‘in-person jobs’). Using novel data from the first wave of the second phase of the High Frequency Phone Survey (HFPS), collected between May and August 2021, and a difference-in-difference approach, our analysis shows that: (1) low-skilled women with in-person jobs in 2020 are participating less in the labour market at the time of the survey; (2) conditional on working in 2021, low-skilled women with virtual jobs seem to be working fewer hours per week; (3) low-skilled women with virtual jobs seem to be experiencing larger increases in the time they devote to non-paid domestic work; and (4) low-skilled women with in-person jobs are perceiving lower reductions in total household income.

Moreover, using domestic workers as a case study for in-person occupations, this paper shows that the previous results are consistent with a decrease in the services provided by domestic workers, as working women in that sector transitioned to inactivity, unemployment, and other occupations during the pandemic. This implies a potential increase in the gender gap in the region in paid and unpaid work and in the vulnerability of women in the domestic work sector who, prior to the pandemic, accounted for more than 11 percent of the female workforce.