Job loss due to coronavirus may hit nearly half the global workforce, according to the International Labor Organisation (ILO). This refers to 1.6 billion in informal work.
These informal workers may become at risk of losing income due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, the ILO states.
Th figure from ILO accounts for nearly four-fifths or 76% of the total 2 billion people in informal work. This is almost half of the entire workforce, of 3.3 billion people, around the world.
The informal economy covers jobs which typically offer little protection, such as for income in case of sickness or lockdown.
According to the United Nations’ labor agency, people in informal work struggled with a 60% decline in income in the first month of the coronavirus crisis. Meanwhile, those in informal work in Africa and the Americas saw the biggest drop, of 81%, based on the estimates.
Analysis shows that people in this group remained at risk of losing income. Workers were from high-risk industries, such as retail and food, which the coronavirus pandemic will likely hit. The ILO noted that there were more informal workers in developing countries.
There are close to 1.1 billion informal economy workers in countries that were under full lockdown, as of April 22. Another 304 million people were in countries with partial lockdown.
Governments worldwide implement lockdown measures to curb the spread of COVID-19. Latest numbers reveal that the virus infected more than three million people globally and killed over 218,000.
Global working hours
According to the ILO, the decline in global working hours in the second quarter of 2020 may now be “significantly worse” than its estimates at the beginning of April. This is because of an extension of lockdown measures that keep businesses closed.
ILO now predicts a 10.5% drop in working hours globally in the second three months of 2020. This accounts for 305 million full-time jobs, based on a standard 48-hour working week. The ILO previously noted a 6.7% fall in working hours, which is the equivalent of 195 million jobs.
Guy Ryder, ILO director-general, pointed out that the world should protect the most vulnerable as the pandemic and jobs crisis evolve.
“Millions of businesses around the world are barely breathing,” he said. “These are the real faces of the world of work. If we don’t help them now, they will simply perish.”
Unemployment in the US
Meanwhile, in the US, the Department of Labor reported that an additional 4.4 million people sought financial relief by filing for unemployment benefits in the US in the week ending April 18.
Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, mentioned that the recent weekly claims have been more than 20 times the pre-coronavirus level, and over five times of the worst five-week stretch during the 2007-2009 financial crisis
Economists claim that the Labor Department could announce that 3.5 million Americans filed initial applications for unemployment insurance last week.
"Based on recent (unemployment insurance) claims and the expectation for a near-complete freeze in hiring, it is not unrealistic to think that the economy may lose 20 million jobs or more in April alone,'' Dante DeAntonio, an economist at Moody’s Analytics, wrote in a note to clients.
"It is becoming clear that estimated employment losses over the last month will be the largest in history, by a long shot.''
