Asia recovers, but still not reaching pre-pandemic levels

According to reports from international institutions, almost 105 million people are officially unemployed in Asia-Pacific, a figure 12% higher than in 2019. Progress was also lost in terms of informal and vulnerable employment, while the fastest growing sectors labor actually employ a very small part of the workers.

Milan () – The countries of the Asia-Pacific region have shown good economic and labor recovery capacity in recent years (excluding some striking cases such as Myanmar, where a brutal civil conflict is taking place), but the The situation has not yet returned to what it was before the Covid-19 pandemic. This is indicated by the latest data from the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), according to which the average GDP growth rate of emerging Asian countries is expected to increase to 5 .3% in 2023 and 5.4% in 2024. Average real GDP growth for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) should reach 4.6% in 2023 and 4.8% in 2024, a This figure is lower than that of 2022, but shows some economic resilience.

In 2021, the ILO warned that the jobs lost during the pandemic would not be recovered before this year, and urged Asia to see the crisis as “a wake-up call for the need to diversify their economies and stop over-reliant on export-led growth.

High inflation rates (combined, in some cases, with domestic political crises) continue to threaten an inclusive and sustainable recovery, according to the report titled “Asia-Pacific Employment and Social Outlook 2022.” However, the reconstruction of the labor market is lagging behind the rest of the world. In 2020, 144 million jobs had been lost and South Asia was the most affected region. In 2022, the number of employees in the Asia-Pacific region was two percentage points above the pre-pandemic level in 2019, indicating a positive employment trend. In fact, the ILO experts pointed out that this is not the case: digging further, the data shows that a full recovery has not yet taken place. In 2022, the employment-to-population ratio of 56.2% was (albeit slightly) lower than 56.9% in 2019. In addition, there was an employment gap of at least 22 million: these are people looking for work but not finding it. find, a figure that is estimated to increase to 26 million in 2023. Men and women, youth and adults continue to be excluded from the active population in all subregions of the continent, the report continues.

The number of hours worked also did not return to pre-pandemic levels. The loss of work hours in the first three quarters of 2022 compared to the fourth quarter of 2019 was estimated at 1.5% (1.9% for men and 0.5% for women). This is related to the unemployment problem: almost 105 million people are out of work in Asia Pacific, a figure 12% higher than the figures for 2019. Finally, two important positive trends have been reversed during the pandemic: the decline in employment informal and the reduction of vulnerable employment, two problems that have once again made themselves felt and that will not be resolved in the short term.

Among the countries most affected by the crisis is Myanmar, where the pandemic was exacerbated by the civil conflict that followed the military coup on February 1, 2021. In that year alone, the ILO estimates that 1.6 million jobs, with an 18% decrease in hours worked compared to 2020, which is equivalent to the working day of 3.1 million people employed full-time. It is women, who work mainly in the textile and tourism sectors, who have suffered the greatest losses.

More than one billion workers in Asia-Pacific (out of a total of 1.9 billion) work in agriculture and fisheries, manufacturing, and commerce. These are sectors where productivity often remains low and which generally do not offer decent wages, good working conditions or workplace security. Paradoxically, the sectors that developed the most in terms of employment growth are those with the fewest workers, most of whom are men. The number of people employed in computer services, for example, grew by 7.2% per year between 1991 and 2021. In that year, however, only 9.4 million people, or 0.5% of the total number of workers were employed in the sector, and three quarters of the 8 million jobs created in that period were occupied by men. By comparison, wholesale and retail trade gained 166 million workers between 1991 and 2021, when 277 million men and women worked in the region. Thus, men are concentrated in sectors that offer higher salary potential (such as IT), while women remain segregated in lower-paid sectors (for example, catering).

According to the ILO, the challenge for the future will be to increase and maintain public investment to guarantee decent work in all sectors, but especially in those where the majority of the population works.