GENEVA (Reuters) – According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), the recovery of the global job market will drag on until at least 2023, which is longer than expected.
In its outlook published on Monday, the ILO lowered its previous forecast for 2022. It is therefore forecasting a deficit in the number of hours worked worldwide, which corresponds to around 52 million full-time jobs compared to the fourth quarter of 2019 and thus before the Corona crisis. Most recently, the organization had only expected a deficit half as large. The experts estimate the number of unemployed for 2022 at 207 million, compared with 186 million in 2019, the year before the corona pandemic began. The main reason for the bleak outlook is the ongoing pandemic with its omicron variant, said ILO Director-General Guy Ryder.
“Two years into the crisis, the outlook remains fragile and the path to recovery is slow and uncertain,” Ryder added. “We are already seeing potentially lasting damage to labor markets and worrying rises in poverty and inequality.” Many people are forced to switch to new forms of work – for example in response to the slump in international travel and tourism. There can be no real recovery from the pandemic unless the job market picks up across the board, Ryder stressed.
Europe and North America are showing encouraging signs of an uptrend, according to the report, while Southeast Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean have the worst prospects. “Nationally, the labor market recovery is strongest in high-income countries, while low- and middle-income economies are the worst performers.”