Covid pandemic has pushed 100 million more people into poverty, UN report reveals

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has crippled industries, plummeted economies and increased unemployment globally. On Wednesday, the United Nations said that the pandemic has pushed over 100 million moe people into poverty. 

Owing to the pandemic, working hours have considerably decreased and good quality jobs are less fairly available.  In a new report, the United Nation’s International Labour Organization (ILO) warned that the crisis in labour market caused by the pandemic is not over yet.

Employment levels will not return to pre-pandemic levels before 2023 based on the current trajectory. The report, titled World Employment and Social Outlook said that the world will be short of 75 million jobs by the end of 2021 compared to if there had been no pandemic.

Even by the next year, there would be 23 million fewer jobs than would have been in a normal scenario. ILO chief Guy Ryder told reporters that besides being a public health crisis, COVID-19 has been “an employment and human crisis”.

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"Without a deliberate effort to accelerate the creation of decent jobs, and support the most vulnerable members of society and the recovery of the hardest-hit economic sectors, the lingering effects of the pandemic could be with us for years in the form of lost human and economic potential, and higher poverty and inequality”, Ryder was cited as saying by AFP.

In 2019, the global unemployment stood at 187 million. The number will shoot up to 205 million people in 2022 and experts claim the real numbers are way worse.

Even among jobs that people retained, working hours have been cut tremendously. In 2020, 8.8 per cent of global working hours were lost compared to 2019. This means 255 million full-time jobs worth of time was lost!

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