Employment recovery hard and uneven in coming years

Global employment recovery can be uneven in different regions and groups while employment growth will be insufficient until at least 2023 to make up for the losses suffered, said a latest international report.

The assessment, World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2021, projected that across the world 250 million will be unemployed in 2022, greatly surpassing the level of 187 million in 2019. Excluding the COVID-19 crisis period, such a rate was last seen in 2013.

Released by the International Labour Organization on Wednesday, the flagship report highlighted the danger of a COVID-19 labor market legacy of increased geographic and demographic inequality, rising poverty and fewer decent jobs.

The report predicted that the global employment recovery will accelerate in the second half of 2021, if there is no worsening in the overall pandemic situation.

However, it also said that the recovery will be "uneven", due to unequal vaccine access and the limited capacity of most developing and emerging economies to support strong fiscal stimulus measures.

Moreover, the report found out that the COVID-19 crisis has also made pre-existing inequalities worse by hitting vulnerable groups harder.

The crisis has hit female employees disproportionately, with their employment declining by 5 percent in 2020 compared to 3.9 percent for men, resulting in a greater proportion of women falling out of the labor market and becoming inactive.

Additional domestic responsibilities resulting from crisis lockdowns have also created the risk of a "re-traditionalization" of gender roles, the report said.

"The burden of intensified childcare and home-schooling activities has disproportionately fallen on them, leading to a rise in unpaid working time for woman that reinforces traditional gender roles," it added. "Setbacks in the advancement of gender equality are especially problematic in those regions where gender gaps were already extensive before the crisis."

Youth employment, on the other hand, fell 8.7 percent in 2020, compared with 3.7 percent for adults, with the most pronounced fall seen in middle-income countries. The consequences of this delay and disruption to the early labor market experience of young people could last for years.

Stefan Kuhn, an economist at the ILO, said in an interview with China Daily that young people deserve particular attention, as their failed start into their working career inhibits their future earnings and employability prospect, thereby wasting vital talent necessary for an economic recovery.

Guy Ryder, ILO director-general, said the serious damage to economies and societies brought by the pandemic needs to be overcome as the recovery "is not just a health issue".

"We need a comprehensive and coordinated strategy, based on human-centered policies, and backed by action and funding," Ryder said. "There can be no real recovery without a recovery of decent jobs."

Kuhn, also the author of the report, said removing sources of unevenness of the employment recovery will support the economic recovery, as the unevenness is "inherently linked with the uneven economic recovery".

"To this aim, governments, together with employer and worker organizations, should come together to ensure that employment recovery benefits all groups," said the economist.

"We also need the right conditions, such as sufficient care facilities, that enable those millions of workers that left the labor force - many of them women - to re-enter the labor market, thereby supporting employment and economic growth," he added.