Support from various arms of policy helped to sustain economies through the periods of lockdown, smooth the shock and speed up the recoveries. The use of wage subsidies to preserve employment had been a feature of labour markets in some advanced economies for many years.
But these programs were used much more widely in response to the pandemic than they had been in past downturns. Several advanced economies, including Australia,  adopted them for the first time. And the share of the workforce covered by these schemes has generally been higher than seen in previous downturns (Graph 7).