$3.5 trillion of wages lost due to COVID-19 pandemic: ILO
- Daniel Teo
- Topics: Home Page - News, Job Cuts, News
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on jobs and wages around the world is more catastrophic than forecasted, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO).
In its recent study, it found that by the mid-year, global working hours had declined by 17.3% compared to last December. That is equivalent to nearly 500 million full-time jobs.
ILO forecasted 14% of working hours to be lost by the end of the second quarter of this year, which is nearly 100 million short of the reported numbers.
ILO chief Guy Ryder also told reporters during a virtual meeting that global labour income had shrunk by 10.7% during the first nine months of the year compared to the same period in 2019.
And that is equivalent to about US$3.5 trillion of wages lost, or 5.5% of the overall global gross domestic product (GDP).
And ILO has warned that the worst has yet to come for the world economy, and that the outlook for the final three months of 2020 had “worsened significantly” since its last report in June.
