The COVID-19 pandemic crisis and the governmental measures taken to limit its spread have led to significant contractions in GDP at the EU level and 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. Thus, this paper aims to investigate how the EU member states can be clustered according to their labour market performances expressed through variables like unemployment rate, poverty rate, GINI coefficient, the minimum wage and the ratio of total COVID deaths over total confirmed cases. The cluster analysis was carried out for the year 2020 and led to the formation of five groups within the EU states that have implemented the minimum wage. Within each group, we noticed 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.
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