How do cash transfers affect employment, formality, and mobility in developing countries, especially in times of crises and economic recovery? This paper examines this question in the context of Indonesia’s major unconditional cash transfer (UCT) programmes, rolled out in a targeted manner in response to adverse economic shocks. Identification is based on a range of difference-in-differences approaches exploiting three waves of nationally-representative longitudinal data on household transfer receipts and labour market outcomes. The paper finds that, in the short term, beneficiaries are less likely to be in the labour force and employed. However, these negative effects are only transitory and about 3 percentage points, or a 5 percent decline from the mean value. Impacts on job formality and mobility are larger, but the direction varies across the UCT settings. These findings are in line with other evidence that employment disincentives from social assistances tend to be minimal, but highlight the importance of other neglected margins of adjustment.