UN body warns of slowdown in the jobs recovery due to new variants, Covid uncertainty

UN body warns of slowdown in the jobs recovery due to new variants, Covid uncertainty

LONDON — The United Nations' International Labour Organization has warned that job market recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic looks set to slow in 2022. In its 2022 World Employment and Social Outlook trends , published Monday, the ILO forecast that the number of hours worked globally in 2022 would be 1.8% lower than in the fourth quarter of 2019, just before the onset of the pandemic. The ILO forecast that there would be an even bigger deficit in working hours in 2022 than it previously estimated. It projected that the fall in global working hours this year would now be the equivalent of losing 52 million full-time jobs, nearly double the 26 million it previously forecast in May 2021. Guy Ryder, ILO director-general, said in a press briefing ahead of the release of the report on Monday that this "downside readjustment is quite considerable." Ryder said that there were a number of reasons behind the expected slowdown in the labor market recovery, including the spread of new Covid variants, such as delta and omicron. The ILO expected the labor market recovery to remain weak through 2023. Ryder said that the far-reaching changes to economic and social behavior brought on by