(Newser)
– Four times more jobs were lost last year due to the coronavirus pandemic than during the worst part of the global financial crisis in 2009, a UN report said on Monday. The International Labor Organization estimated that restrictions on business and public life destroyed 8.8% of all working hours in the world last year. This is equivalent to 255 million full-time jobs – quadrupling the impact of the financial crisis over a decade ago, reports the AP. “This has been the most severe crisis for the world of work since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Its impact is far greater than that of the 2009 global financial crisis,” said ILO Director-General Guy Ryder. The consequences were almost equally divided between reduced working hours and “unprecedented” job losses, he said.
The United Nations agency noted that most people who lost their jobs stopped looking for jobs, probably because of restrictions on companies that hire large numbers, such as restaurants, bars, shops, hotels and other services that depend on face-to-face interactions. face. The drop in work translates into a loss of $ 3.7 trillion in global income – what Ryder called an “extraordinary figure” – with women and young people receiving the biggest hits. The ILO report expects a recovery in employment in the second half of the year. But that depends on a reduction in coronavirus infections and the launch of vaccines. Infections are still increasing or remain high in many countries today, and vaccine distribution is slow overall. (The pandemic helped put China’s economy on the fastest path to overcoming that of the United States.)