GENEVA - Some 8.8% of global working hours were lost last year due to the pandemic, roughly four times the number lost in the 2009 financial crisis, but there are “tentative signs” of recovery, the International Labour Organisation said on Monday.
“These massive losses resulted in an 8.3 per cent decline in global labour income , equivalent to $3.7 trillion or 4.4 per cent of global gross domestic product ,” the ILO, a U.N. agency, said in its seventh report on the crisis since March. But it was “particularly concerning” that 71% of the job losses, or 81 million people, came in the form of inactivity, Ryder said. “These people have simply dropped out of the labour market. Either they are unable to work, perhaps because of pandemic restrictions, or social obligations or they have given up looking for work,” he added.