Global economic slowdown likely to force workers to take lower quality jobs: UN labor agency

By Peter Kenny

GENEVA (AA) - The global economic slowdown is likely to force more workers to accept lower quality, an International Labor Organization (ILO) report said on Monday.

The report, titled World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2023, also projected that global employment growth will be only 1% in 2023, less than half the level in 2022.

"The need for more decent work and social justice is clear and urgent," said ILO Director-General Gilbert F. Houngbo.

"But to meet these multiple challenges, we must work together to create a new global social contract."

He said the ILO will campaign for a Global Coalition for Social Justice to build support, create the policies needed, and prepare for the future of work.

Global unemployment is projected to rise slightly in 2023, by around 3 million to 208 million, corresponding to a global unemployment rate of 5.8%.

The moderate size of this projected increase is mainly due to the tight labor supply in high-income countries

“This would mark a reversal of the decline in global unemployment seen between 2020-2022. It means that global unemployment will remain 16 million above the pre-crisis benchmark (set in 2019),” the ILO said.

- Progress waned

The ILO says that a decade of progress in poverty reduction waned during the COVID-19 crisis.

"The slowdown in global employment growth means that we don't expect the losses incurred during the COVID-19 crisis to be recovered before 2025," said Richard Samans, the ILO's Research Department director and report coordinator.

The study said that despite a nascent recovery during 2021, the shortage of better job opportunities is likely to worsen.

"The current slowdown means that many workers will have to accept lower quality jobs, often at very low pay, sometimes with insufficient hours," the report said.

Furthermore, as prices rise faster than nominal incomes, the cost-of-living crisis risks pushing more people into poverty.

"The labor market deterioration is mainly due to emerging geopolitical tensions and the Ukraine conflict, uneven pandemic recovery, and continuing bottlenecks in global supply chains," the report said.

"Together, these have created the conditions for stagflation - simultaneously high inflation and low growth – for the first time since the 1970s," it added.

- Europe, Central Asia fallout

"Europe and Central Asia are particularly hard hit by the economic fallout from the Ukraine conflict," the ILO said.

"While employment is projected to decline in 2023, their unemployment rates should increase only slightly given the backdrop of limited growth in the working-age population," it added.

Annual employment growth in Asia, the Pacific, Latin America, and the Caribbean, are projected to be around 1%.

In Northern America, there will be few or no employment gains in 2023, and unemployment will pick up, according to the report.

In 2023, Africa and the Arab nations will likely see employment growth of around 3% or more.

"However, with their growing working-age populations, both regions are likely to see unemployment rates decline only modestly (from 7.4 to 7.3% cent in Africa and 8.5 to 8.2 % in the Arab States)," the report said.