The International Labour Organization of the United Nations revealed that the Coronavirus has caused about $3.5 trillion to be written off from the wages of employees in the world, as it has weighed more heavily on jobs than previously feared, with hundreds of millions of jobs lost while workers suffer under the weight of a “tremendous” decline in their incomes.
According to the study, working hours worldwide in the middle of the year decreased by 17.3 percent compared to last December, which is equivalent to about 500 million full-time jobs. That figure exceeded by nearly 100 million jobs of ILO’s forecasts in June, with working hours falling by 14 percent by the end of the second three-month period of the year.
In this context, the Director-General of the International Labor Organization, Guy Ryder, said: "the repercussions were catastrophic, as labor income worldwide declined by 10.7 percent during the first nine months of the year, compared to the same period in 2019, as this represents a decrease of $3.5 trillion, equivalent to 5.5 percent of the global GDP."
The International Labour Organization warns that the forecast for the last three months of 2020 has worsened significantly since its last report in June, as the organization expects the working hours to decrease by 8.6 percent, the equivalent of 245 million full-time jobs.
Source (Al-Arab Newspaper-London, Edited)
