Pandemic still demands heavy jobs: UN – Expat Guide to Switzerland
The Covid-19 crisis continues to hit jobs around the world hard, the United Nations said on Monday, warning that it could take years for employment levels to return to pre-pandemic levels.
In a new study, the International Labor Organization of the United Nations has revised its previous forecast that the global labor market will almost completely recover from the virus this year.
Blaming the impact of Covid variants such as Delta and Omicron and uncertainty about how the pandemic will evolve, she now forecasts a significant shortfall in working hours in 2022 compared to before the onset of Covid-19.
“Global labor markets are recovering from the crisis much more slowly than we previously expected,” ILO chief Guy Ryder told reporters, warning that the outlook “remains fragile”.
“We are already seeing potentially lasting damage to labor markets, as well as worrying rises in poverty and inequality.”
Monday’s report predicted that global hours worked would be two percent below 2019 figures, leaving the world missing the equivalent of around 52 million jobs.
Last May, the ILO predicted that the working hour shortage would be half as high this year.
At the same time, the official global unemployment rate remains significantly higher than before the outbreak of the pandemic.
– 207 million unemployed –
This year, 5.9 percent of the world’s workers, or around 207 million people, are expected to be officially registered as unemployed, which is better than 2021 and especially 2020, but still more than 186 million in 2019.
According to the ILO report, the global unemployment rate is expected to remain above the pre-crisis rate of 5.4 percent “until at least 2023”.
And she warned that the overall impact on employment is significantly larger than these figures suggest, as many people have exited the labor market altogether.
In 2022, the global labor force participation rate is expected to remain 1.2 percentage points below the level of three years ago, it said.
According to the ILO, this corresponds to a deficit of around 40 million workers worldwide.
Ryder warned that the pandemic has already “weakened the economic, financial and social fabric in almost every country, regardless of the level of development”.
At the same time, the ILO pointed out that disparities in access to vaccines and economic recovery measures mean that the crisis is affecting worker groups and countries in very different ways.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the report said labor markets in higher-income countries appeared to be recovering faster, though some were now facing labor shortage-related issues, Ryder said.
– ‘Years to repair’ –
Numerous factors appear to be driving the so-called “great resignation” in some countries, Ryder said, adding that the crisis has clearly “prompted a significant number of people in the workforce to reconsider their employment”.
According to the report, changes in the way we work now appear to be deepening various forms of inequality, including deepening gender inequality.
It was clear from the start that the pandemic was disproportionately affecting women, who have taken on the lion’s share of the additional care work and are also more likely to work in hard-hit industries such as services and travel.
However, Ryder warned that the effects could linger long after the pandemic is over.
“There are concerns that the long Covid effect on gender at work could be negative,” he said.
Changes such as the trend towards greater reliance on informal self-employment, the rise of remote work and changing trends in temporary work “can all affect the quality of working conditions,” the report says.
Ryder insisted that only a “broad job market recovery” would allow the world to truly recover from the pandemic.
“To be sustainable, this recovery must be based on decent work principles – including health and safety, equity, social protection and social dialogue,” he said.
The ILO chief warned that “without concerted and effective international and national policies in many countries, it will likely take years to repair this damage”.