Geneva, Switzerland —
The pandemic has pushed over 100 million more workers into poverty, the
UN said in a report, after working hours plummeted and access to good quality jobs
evaporated.
اضافة اعلان
In a report, the
UN’s
International Labor Organization (ILO) cautioned that the labor market crisis
created by the pandemic was far from over, with employment not expected to
bounce back to pre-pandemic levels until 2023 at the earliest.
The ILO’s annual World
Employment and Social Outlook report indicated that the planet would be 75
million jobs short at the end of this year compared to if the pandemic had not
occurred.
And it would still
count 23 million fewer jobs by the end of next year.
COVID-19 “has not just
been a public health crisis, it’s also been an employment and human crisis,”
ILO chief Guy Ryder told reporters.
“Without a deliberate
effort to accelerate the creation of decent jobs, and support the most
vulnerable members of society and the recovery of the hardest-hit economic sectors,
the lingering effects of the pandemic could be with us for years in the form of
lost human and economic potential, and higher poverty and inequality.”
Working hours slashed
The report showed that
global unemployment was expected to stand at 205 million people in 2022 — far
higher than the 187 million in 2019.
But the situation is
worse than official unemployment figures indicate.
Many people have held
onto their jobs but have seen their working hours cut dramatically.
In 2020, 8.8 percent
of global working hours were lost compared to the fourth quarter of 2019 — the
equivalent of 255 million full-time jobs.
While the situation
has improved, global working hours have far from bounced back, and the world
will still be short the equivalent of 100 million full-time jobs by the end of
this year, the report found.
“This shortfall in
employment and working hours comes on top of persistently high pre-crisis
levels of unemployment, labor underutilization and poor working conditions,”
the ILO said.
And while global
employment is expected to recover more quickly in the second half of 2021 —
provided the overall pandemic situation does not worsen -- the ILO warned that
the recovery would be highly uneven.
This, it said, was due
to inequitable access to Covid-19 vaccines. So far, more than 75 percent of all
the jabs have gone to just 10 countries.
‘Working poverty’
The limited capacity
of most developing and emerging economies to support strong fiscal stimulus
measures will also take its toll, the ILO said, warning that the quality of
newly created jobs will likely deteriorate in those countries.
The fall in employment
and hours worked has meanwhile translated into a sharp drop in labor income and
a rise in poverty.
Compared to 2019, 108
million more workers around the world were categorized as poor or extremely
poor, meaning they and their families live on less than $3.20 per person per
day, the study showed.
“The poverty figures
are absolutely dramatic,” Ryder said, warning that five years of progress
towards eradicating working poverty had been undone.
The report highlighted
how the COVID-19 crisis had worsened pre-existing inequalities by hitting
vulnerable workers harder.
For many of the two
billion people who work in the informal sector, where social protections are
generally lacking, pandemic-related work disruptions have had catastrophic
consequences for family incomes and livelihoods.
The crisis has also
disproportionately hit women, who have fallen out of the labor market at a
greater rate than men, even as they have taken on more of the additional burden
of caring for out-of-school children and others.
This, the report
warned, had created the risk of a “re-traditionalization” of gender roles.
Youth employment
meanwhile fell 8.7 percent last year — more than double the 3.7 percent for
older workers.
“The consequences of
this delay and disruption to the early labor market experience of young people
could last for years,” the ILO said.
To ensure an economic
recovery and avoid a long-term scarring of the global labour market, Ryder said
the world urgently needed a comprehensive and coordinated strategy backed by
action and funding.
“There can be no real
recovery without a recovery of decent jobs,” he said.
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