GENEVA: The UN International Labour Organization (ILO) has said Job losses and reduced working hours due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic cost the world the equivalent of 255 million jobs in 2020.
In its report released on Monday, the UN’s International Labour Organization (ILO) found that a full 8.8 per cent of global working hours were lost in 2020, compared to the fourth quarter of 2019.
That is equivalent to 255 million full-time jobs, or “approximately four times greater than the number lost during the 2009 global financial crisis,” the ILO said in a statement.
ILO chief Guy Ryder in a virtual briefing to media said, “This has been the most severe crisis for the world of work since the Great Depression of the 1930s.”
The UN labour agency explained that around half of the lost working hours were calculated from reduced working hours for those remaining in employment. However, the world also saw “unprecedented levels of employment loss” last year, it said.
Official global unemployment shot up by 1.1 per cent, or 33 million more people, to a total of 220 million and a worldwide jobless rate of 6.5 per cent last year.
Ryder stressed that another 81 million people did not register as unemployed but “simply dropped out of the labour market”. “Either they are unable to work perhaps because of pandemic restrictions or social obligations or they have given up looking for work,” he added.
The lost working hours last year shrank global labour income by a full 8.3 per cent, the ILO report said. That amounts to a drop of some $3.7 trillion, or 4.4 per cent of overall global gross domestic product (GDP), the report added.
The ILO cautioned that the prospects for a global labour market recovery this year are “slow, uneven and uncertain.” The organisation pointed to the uneven impact the crisis had had on the world’s workers, affecting women and younger workers far more than others.
Globally, employment losses for women last year stood at five per cent, compared with 3.9 per cent for men. “Women are more likely to work in the harder-hit sectors of the economy, and also have taken on more of the burden of, for instance, caring for children forced to stay home from school”.
The report mentioned that the younger workers were also far more likely to lose jobs, with employment loss among 15-24-year-olds at 8.7 per cent globally, compared with 3.7 per cent for older workers.
Many young people also put off trying to enter the labour market given the complicated conditions last year, the ILO found, warning that there was truly an “all too real risk of a lost generation”.
The uneven impact on different sectors, with accommodation and food services the worst affected, showing a drop in employment of more than 20 per cent, the report highlighted.
Looking forward, the ILO urged on countries to provide particular support to the hardest-hit groups and sectors, and also to sectors likely to be able to generate numerous jobs quickly. It stressed the need for more support to poorer countries with fewer resources to promote employment recovery.
Since surfacing in China just over a year ago, the COVID-19 pandemic has killed more than 2.1 million people, infected tens of millions of others and hammered the global economy.
Our new report assesses the damage of the #COVID19 crisis and the numbers are grim. 8.8% of global working hours were lost last year, roughly 255 million full-time jobs – that's four times more than were lost during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. Report: https://t.co/0p2z7ejG8V pic.twitter.com/yHgGmU9Rmx
— International Labour Organization (@ilo) January 25, 2021
