United Nations: The COVID-19 pandemic has created an unparalleled global labour market crisis that will affect the employment market for years, the International Labor Organization said in a report Wednesday.
The UN agency said that "all countries have suffered a sharp deterioration in employment and national income, which has aggravated existing inequalities and risks inflicting longer-term scarring effects on workers and enterprises". The 164-page World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2021 report said the crisis has hit vulnerable workers, including 2 billion in the informal sector, women and young people the hardest.
During 2020, an estimated 8.8% of total working hours were lost -- "the equivalent of the hours worked in one year by 255 million full-time workers, the agency said. By contrast, it said, if there had not been a pandemic, the world would have created an estimated 30 million new jobs in 2020.
The Geneva-based agency said recurring waves of the pandemic around the world have caused working hour losses to remain high, with a 4.4% loss corresponding to 140 million full-time jobs in the first quarter of 2021 and a 4.4% loss in the second quarter equivalent to 127 million full-time jobs.
"The crisis is far from over," the agency added, pointing to Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe and Central Asia as the worst affected regions in the first half of this year.
The report said an uneven economic recovery is expected to begin in the second half of 2021, driven by progress in vaccinations and large-scale fiscal spending.