UN: Recovering Employment could take Years

The Covid-19 crisis continues to have a strong impact on employment around the world, the UN said, warning that it could take years for employment levels to reach pre-pandemic levels.

In a new study, the United Nations International Labor Organization (ILO) revises its previous forecast that the global labor market will recover almost completely this year.

Blaming the impact of the Delta and Omicron variants and uncertainty on how the pandemic will develop, the ILO now predicts a significant shortage of working hours in 2022 compared to the pre-virus period.

ILO chief Guy Ryder told reporters that the outlook "remains volatile."

"Global labor markets are recovering from the crisis much slower than we expected before. We are already witnessing potentially lasting damage to labor markets, as well as a worrying increase in poverty and inequality," he added.

The report predicts that working hours worldwide will be 2% less than in 2019, which means that the world will be missing about 52 million jobs.

In May last year, the ILO predicted that the shortage of working hours would be only half as small. At the same time, the official global unemployment rate remains significantly higher than before the pandemic.

This year, 5.9% of the world's working population, or about 207 million people, are expected to be officially registered as unemployed, which is better than in 2021 and especially in 2020, but still more of the 186 million in 2019

The ILO report says that "at least until 2023" the global unemployment rate is expected to remain above the 5.4% level seen before the crisis. And they warn that the overall impact on employment is significantly greater than previously projected, as many...