GENEVA - Four times as many jobs were lost last year due to the coronavirus pandemic as during the worst part of the global financial crisis in 2009, a U.N. report said Monday.
The International Labor Organization estimated that the restrictions on businesses and public life destroyed 8.8% of all work hours around the world last year. That is equivalent to 255 million full-time jobs - quadruple the impact of the financial crisis over a decade ago.
“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 global financial crisis of 2009,” said ILO Director-General Guy Ryder. The fallout was almost equally split between reduced work hours and “unprecedented” job losses, he said.
The United Nations agency noted that most people who lost work stopped looking for a job altogether, likely because of restrictions on businesses that hire in big numbers like restaurants, bars, stores, hotels and other services that depend on face-to-face interactions.
The drop in work translates to a loss of $3.7 trillion in income globally — what Ryder called an “extraordinary figure” — with women and young people taking the biggest hits.
The ILO report expects a bounce back in jobs in the second half of the year. But that depends on a reduction in coronavirus infections and the rollout of vaccines. Currently, infections are rising or remain stubbornly high in many countries and vaccine distribution is still slow overall.
mirrormantra on January 25th, 2021 at 19:41 UTC »
Financial crash hit when I was 18, this depression turns up just as I’m about to turn 30. What a nice way to bookend those formative years; evaporating opportunities...
Kenna193 on January 25th, 2021 at 14:47 UTC »
The key difference being that financial institutions aren't burdened with billions in bad mortgage debt this time. How that plays out and how it's different from 2008 will be interesting.
cmc on January 25th, 2021 at 13:35 UTC »
Yeah, I live in a huge metro area and the drastic drop in tourism dollars can be felt far and wide. I used to work in the hotel industry and the majority of my former colleagues have lost their jobs (I lost mine too, but ended up changing industries quickly since I could see the writing on the wall). There's predictions that our travel industry-adjacent jobs won't return to pre-COVID numbers for 5 or more years. Wtf is everyone supposed to do in the meantime? There are literally not enough jobs to go around.
edit: Just to clarify since I'm getting a ton of suggestions for jobs to apply for - I am not unemployed. I lost my hospitality job and was hired in a different industry.