Global employment crisis deepening, equivalent of 400m of job loses, says UN

GENEVA: The coronavirus crisis has taken a much heavier toll on jobs than previously feared, the UN said on Tuesday, warning that the situation in the Americas was particularly dire.

In a fresh study, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimated that by the mid-year point, global working hours were down 14 percent compared to last December — equivalent to some 400 million full-time jobs.

That is more than double the number forecast by the UN organisation back in April, when it expected 6.7 percent of working hours to be lost by the end of the second three-month period of the year.

It is also far higher than the ILO estimate in late May, when it expected 10.7 percent of global working hours to vanish during the period.“Things are getting worse. The job crisis is deepening,” ILO chief Guy Ryder said in an interview. “We are not through this yet,” he warned.

The ILO said the new figures reflected the worsening situation in many regions in recent weeks, especially in developing economies.

Its report pointed out that 93 percent of the world’s workers live in countries still affected by some sort of workplace closures, with the Americas experiencing the greatest restrictions. The United States and Latin America are currently the areas hardest-hit by the pandemic, which has killed more than 500,000 people worldwide and infected more than 10 million.