Workers facing worst crisis since WWII amid pandemic: UN

Some 1.25 billion workers are seeing their livelihoods threatened by the COVID-19 pandemic, the United Nations said on Tuesday, warning it was the "worst global crisis" since World War II.

In a fresh study, the International Labour Organization warned that the global spread of the new coronavirus and the drastic measures taken to rein in the disease would, during the second quarter of 2020 alone, wipe out 6.7 per cent of working hours globally.

That is equivalent to 195 million full-time workers, the UN agency pointed out.

The study comes as the number of cases of the new coronavirus, which first emerged in China late last year, soared past 1.35 million worldwide, including more than 75,500 deaths, according to a tally compiled by AFP from official sources.

The report found that the Asia Pacific region would see the greatest loss in hours worked, with the equivalent of 125 million full-time jobs obliterated there over the next three months.

"The pandemic is having very serious consequences for the world of work," ILO chief Guy Ryder told reporters in a virtual briefing.

"Just over four out of every five workers live in a country where partial or total lockdowns are in operation," he pointed out, with a full 81 percent of the global workforce of 3.3 billion people now affected.

The agency said it expected there would be "huge losses" across all different income groups, especially in upper-middle income countries. "This far exceeds the effects of the 2008-9 financial crisis," it said.

And it cautioned that the number of people added to the world's unemployment rolls this year due to the pandemic was now expected to be "significantly higher" than the 25 million it projected just two weeks ago. That comes on top of the nearly 190 million people registered as jobless in 2019, prior to the pandemic, it said.

"During the past two weeks, the COVID-19 pandemic has intensified and expanded in terms of its global reach, with huge impacts on public health and unprecedented shocks to economies and labour markets," the study said.

"It is the worst global crisis since the Second World War."
"We have to move fast, decisively, and together. The right, urgent, measures, could make the difference between survival and collapse."