WORLD

ILO flags rising unemployment crisis, projects 220 million people to be jobless globally this year

At least 220 million people are expected to remain unemployed globally this year, well above pre-pandemic levels, with a weak labour market recovery exacerbating existing inequalities, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said in a report on Wednesday. The United Nations agency forecast the outlook improving to 205 million unemployed next year – still well above the 187 million recorded in 2019 before the Coronavirus crisis wreaked havoc. 


The ILO models project global unemployment rate of 6.3 per cent this year, falling to 5.7 per cent next year but still up on the pre-pandemic rate of 5.4 per cent in 2019. “Employment growth will be insufficient to make up for the losses suffered until at least 2023,” the ILO said in the report, World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2021. 


Stefan Kuehn, an ILO economist and lead author of the report, said that that the true impact on the labour market was even greater when reduced working hours imposed on many workers and other factors were accounted for. All told, it estimated that working-hour losses in 2020 relative to 2019 amounted to the equivalent of 144 million full-time jobs in 2020, a shortfall that still stood at 127 million in the second quarter of this year.


“Unemployment does not capture the impact on the labour market,” Mr Kuehn said, noting that whereas hiring in the United States had resumed after massive job losses, many workers elsewhere, particularly in Europe, remained on reduced-hour schemes. Women, young people and the 2 billion people working in informal sectors have been the hardest hit, with 108 million more workers worldwide now categorised as poor or extremely poor compared to those 2019, it said.

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