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– Last year, the coronavirus pandemic lost four times as many jobs as during the worst part of the global financial crisis in 2009, a UN report said Monday. The International Labor Organization estimated that the restrictions on business and public life destroyed 8.8% of all working hours around the world last year. That equates to 255 million full-time jobs – quadrupling the impact of the financial crisis more than a decade ago, the AP reports. “This was the worst crisis for the world of work since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Its impact far exceeds that of the global financial crisis of 2009,” said ILO Director General Guy Ryder. The consequences were almost evenly split between fewer hours of work and “unprecedented” job losses, he said.
The United Nations bureau noted that most people who lost work were no longer looking for a job at all, probably due to restrictions on companies hiring large numbers of people, such as restaurants, bars, shops, hotels and other are of personal interactions. The decline in work translates into a worldwide loss of $ 3.7 trillion in income – what Ryder called an “extraordinary figure” – hitting women and young people the most. The ILO report expects jobs to recover in the second half of the year. But that depends on a decrease in coronavirus infections and the roll-out of vaccines. Currently, infections are still on the rise or remain high in many countries and vaccine distribution is generally slow. (The pandemic has helped put the Chinese economy on a fast track to overtake that of the US.)