“There can be no re­al re­cov­ery from this pan­dem­ic with­out a broad-based labour mar­ket re­cov­ery. And to be sus­tain­able, this re­cov­ery must be based on the prin­ci­ples of de­cent work – in­clud­ing health and safe­ty, eq­ui­ty, so­cial pro­tec­tion and so­cial di­a­logue…"
—Guy Ry­der, ILO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al

GENE­VA (ILO News) – The In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­ga­ni­za­tion (ILO) has down­grad­ed its fore­cast for labour mar­ket re­cov­ery in 2022, pro­ject­ing a deficit in hours worked glob­al­ly equiv­a­lent to 52 mil­lion full-time jobs, rel­a­tive to the fourth quar­ter of 2019. The pre­vi­ous full-year es­ti­mate in May 2021 pro­ject­ed a deficit of 26 mil­lion full-time equiv­a­lent jobs.

While this lat­est pro­jec­tion is an im­prove­ment on the sit­u­a­tion in 2021, it re­mains al­most two per cent be­low the num­ber of glob­al hours worked pre-pan­dem­ic, ac­cord­ing to the ILO World Em­ploy­ment and So­cial Out­look – Trends 2022 (WE­SO Trends).

Glob­al un­em­ploy­ment is ex­pect­ed to re­main above pre-COVID-19 lev­els un­til at least 2023. The 2022 lev­el is es­ti­mat­ed at 207 mil­lion, com­pared to 186 mil­lion in 2019. The ILO’s re­port al­so cau­tions that the over­all im­pact on em­ploy­ment is sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater than rep­re­sent­ed in these fig­ures be­cause many peo­ple have left the labour force. In 2022, the glob­al labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion rate is pro­ject­ed to re­main 1.2 per­cent­age points be­low that of 2019.

The down­grade in the 2022 fore­cast re­flects, to some ex­tent, the im­pact that re­cent vari­ants of COVID-19, such as Delta and Omi­cron, are hav­ing on the world of work, as well as sig­nif­i­cant un­cer­tain­ty re­gard­ing the fu­ture course of the pan­dem­ic.

The WE­SO Trends re­port warns of the stark dif­fer­ences in the im­pact the cri­sis is hav­ing across groups of work­ers and coun­tries. These dif­fer­ences are deep­en­ing in­equal­i­ties with­in and among coun­tries and weak­en­ing the eco­nom­ic, fi­nan­cial and so­cial fab­ric of al­most every na­tion, re­gard­less of de­vel­op­ment sta­tus. This dam­age is like­ly to re­quire years to re­pair, with po­ten­tial long-term con­se­quences for labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion, house­hold in­comes and so­cial and – pos­si­bly – po­lit­i­cal co­he­sion.

The ef­fects are be­ing felt in labour mar­kets in all re­gions of the world, al­though a great di­ver­gence in re­cov­ery pat­terns can be ob­served. The Eu­ro­pean and the North Amer­i­can re­gions are show­ing the most en­cour­ag­ing signs of re­cov­ery, while South-East Asia and Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean have the most neg­a­tive out­look. At the na­tion­al lev­el, labour mar­ket re­cov­ery is strongest in high-in­come coun­tries, while low­er-mid­dle-in­come economies are far­ing worst.

The dis­pro­por­tion­ate im­pact of the cri­sis on women’s em­ploy­ment is ex­pect­ed to last in the com­ing years, the re­port says. While the clos­ing of ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing in­sti­tu­tions “will have cas­cad­ing long-term im­pli­ca­tions” for young peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly those with­out in­ter­net ac­cess.

“Two years in­to this cri­sis, the out­look re­mains frag­ile and the path to re­cov­ery is slow and un­cer­tain,” said ILO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al, Guy Ry­der. “We are al­ready see­ing po­ten­tial­ly last­ing dam­age to labour mar­kets, along with con­cern­ing in­creas­es in pover­ty and in­equal­i­ty. Many work­ers are be­ing re­quired to shift to new types of work – for ex­am­ple in re­sponse to the pro­longed slump in in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el and tourism.”

“There can be no re­al re­cov­ery from this pan­dem­ic with­out a broad-based labour mar­ket re­cov­ery. And to be sus­tain­able, this re­cov­ery must be based on the prin­ci­ples of de­cent work – in­clud­ing health and safe­ty, eq­ui­ty, so­cial pro­tec­tion and so­cial di­a­logue.”

The WE­SO Trends in­cludes com­pre­hen­sive labour mar­ket pro­jec­tions for 2022 and 2023. It gives as­sess­ments of how labour mar­ket re­cov­ery has un­fold­ed world­wide, re­flect­ing dif­fer­ent na­tion­al ap­proach­es to pan­dem­ic re­cov­ery and analysing the ef­fects on dif­fer­ent groups of work­ers and eco­nom­ic sec­tors.

The ILO re­port shows that, as in pre­vi­ous crises, tem­po­rary em­ploy­ment cre­at­ed a buffer against the shock of the pan­dem­ic for some. While many tem­po­rary jobs were ter­mi­nat­ed or not re­newed, al­ter­na­tive ones were cre­at­ed, in­clud­ing for work­ers who had lost per­ma­nent jobs. On av­er­age, the in­ci­dence of tem­po­rary work did not change.

The WE­SO Trends al­so of­fers a sum­ma­ry of key pol­i­cy rec­om­men­da­tions aimed at cre­at­ing a ful­ly in­clu­sive, hu­man-cen­tred re­cov­ery from the cri­sis at both na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els. These are based on the Glob­al Call to Ac­tion for a Hu­man-Cen­tred Re­cov­ery from the COVID-19 Cri­sis that Is In­clu­sive, Sus­tain­able and Re­silient, that was adopt­ed by the ILO’s 187 Mem­ber States in June 2021.

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Learn more about the Glob­al Call to Ac­tion for a Hu­man-Cen­tred Re­cov­ery from the COVID-19 Cri­sis that Is In­clu­sive, Sus­tain­able and Re­silient, here…  https://www.ilo.org/in­fos­to­ries/en-GB/Cam­paigns/covid19/glob­al­call

Read about the WE­SO Trends 2022 Re­port, here…  https://www.ilo.org/glob­al/re­search/glob­al-re­ports/we­so/trends2022/lang--en/in­dex.htm