Global unemployment to fall 5.3%; low-income nations lag in recovery: ILO

ILO said it has developed a new indicator 'jobs gap' which offers more elaborate measure of the unmet demand for employment, especially in developing countries

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) on Wednesday said global unemployment is likely to fall below the pre-pandemic levels to 5.3 per cent or 191 million in 2023.

ILO in its 11th edition 'World of Work' called for global financial support for the creation of jobs and social protection. This is after the ILO stated that low-income countries may be far behind other nations as far as the recovery process is concerned.

ILO stated, "Mutually reinforcing crises, including rising debt levels, are disproportionately affecting developing countries, worsening the global employment divide between high-income and low-income countries and widening existing inequalities exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic."

The organisation further projected that low-income countries in the Arab and African region will not be able to recover to the pre-Covid levels of unemployment in 2023. For North Africa, the unemployment rate in 2023 is projected to be 11.2 per cent compared to 10.9 per cent in 2019, for Sub-Saharan Africa it is projected at 6.3 per cent as against 5.7 per cent in 2019 and 9.3 per cent for the Arab states as against 8.7 per cent in 2019).

Latin America and the Caribbean are among the regions that have managed to reduce their unemployment rates substantially below to pre-Covid levels (6.7 per cent as compared to 8 per cent in 2019).

Some of the other regions that have significantly reduced their rate are northern, southern, and western Europe with an unemployment rate of 6.3 per cent vis-a-vis 7 per cent in 2019, and central and Western Asia with 7.8 per cent as against 9.2 per cent in 2019.

In its report, ILO further added that it has developed the jobs gap, which is a new indicator. It offers a more elaborate measure of the unmet demand for employment, especially in developing countries.