This policy brief investigates how countries responded to immediate shortages of workers during the COVID-19 crisis. It identifies which jobs were in demand using online vacancy data and describes the skills profiles of those jobs. By comparing them with the skills profiles of similar jobs in low demand, it considers the viability of redeploying unemployed adults to jobs where hiring is increasing. The brief shares examples of innovative ways in which countries retrained and redeployed their labour force to meet immediate demand during the health crisis.