Growth shocks to render more jobless, warns ILO

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) in a new report on Monday warned that the Asia-Pacific region still lacks 22 million jobs in 2022, and this number is projected to increase to 26 million in 2023 given the headwinds to growth in the current geopolitical global and regional context. In its report, “Asia-Pacific Employment and Social Outlook 2022: Rethinking sectoral strategies for a human-centered future of work”, ILO says the employment numbers in the region in 2022 were 2.0 per cent above the pre-Covid-19 crisis level of 2019, recovering from the loss of over 57 million jobs in 2020. The three largest sectors in terms of employment in the Asia–Pacific region are agriculture, forestry and fishing; manufacturing; and wholesale and retail trade. These sectors together accounted for 1.1 billion workers in 2021, or 60pc of the region’s 1.9 billion workforce.