A new report by the International Labour Organisation has warned of a slow and uncertain recovery as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to have a significant impact on global labour markets. 

The report titled “World Employment and Social Outlook Trends 2022” was issued this week and downgraded its forecast for labour market recovery this year and instead projected a deficit in hours worked globally equivalent to 52 million full-time jobs, relative to the fourth quarter of 2019.

The I.L.O. Director General Guy Ryder said two years into this pandemic the outlook remains fragile and the path to recovery is slow and uncertain.

“We are already seeing potentially lasting damage to labour markets, along with concerning increases in poverty and inequality,” he said in a statement accompanying the report. 

“Many workers are being required to shift to new types of work – for example in response to the prolonged slump in international travel and tourism.

“There can be no real recovery from this pandemic without a broad-based labour market recovery.

“And to be sustainable, this recovery must be based on the principles of decent work – including health and safety, equity, social protection and social dialogue.”

The report revealed that Asia and the Pacific is the region that has undergone the most rapid structural change over the past decade. 

“It has some of the highest GDP growth rates in the world, driven by increased trade and integration into global and regional value chains and facilitated by technological change (ILO 2021a),” reads the report.

“A declining labour share of income reflects shifts in production structures towards more capital-intensive industries.

“This process has been accompanied by a growth in inequality along various dimensions, including widening rural–urban gaps and an increasing skills premium between high-skilled and low-skilled occupations.

“Before the pandemic, working poverty and informality remained widespread in the region, despite the rapid economic growth, high labour force participation and employment rates, and relatively limited under-utilisation of labour.

“Across Asia and the Pacific as a whole total working time in 2020 fell by the equivalent of over 130 million F.T.E. jobs.”

Furthermore, the report states that the net employment losses amounted to approximately 58 million in 2020; 39 million of the workers in question exited the labour force. 

“The region’s labour market recovery is projected to be slow,” reads the report. The pandemic is estimated to have driven over 2 million workers to fall below the extreme poverty line in Asia and the Pacific in 2020, and another 1.6 million to fall below the moderate poverty line, reversing some of the progress made in poverty reduction over recent decades.

“Working poverty figures underestimate the poverty impact of the crisis, however, since they do not account for low-income earners who became jobless because of the pandemic.

“Among the groups most vulnerable to the pandemic in this region are informal workers, who account for high shares of employment in some of the heavily hit sectors, and migrant workers.”