The Asia-Pacific area is likely to experience higher unemployment as a result of the global economic downturn brought on by bottlenecks in overall growth, with millions of people turning to illegal sources of income in nations like Pakistan to make ends meet.
In its report titled “Asia-Pacific Employment and Social Outlook 2022: Rethinking sectoral strategies for a human-centered future of work,” the International Labour Organization (ILO) noted that in 2021, there were 35 million fewer people employed than there might have been had the slowdown never occurred.
This difference decreased even more to 22 million in 2022, but it is anticipated to grow once more to 26 million in 2023.
According to the paper, the global economy has remained in crisis mode for three years after the COVID-19 pandemic started, contending with a turbulent and highly uncertain environment coupled with geopolitical difficulties and climate-related disasters.
Examples of recent events include the flooding in Pakistan and the heat wave that affected numerous Chinese regions.
As Afghanistan, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka show, the area is likewise not exempt from economic, political, or humanitarian disasters.
There are few country-level statistics on unofficial employment. The data show increases in the informal unemployment rate between 2019 and 2021 for various nations when it is present with a recent time series.
For instance, in Pakistan (Q2 2019–21), 3.5 million more people entered the informal labor force, and the informal employment rate rose from 81.9 to 83.5 percent.
According to the survey, new technologies and their anticipated effects on employment and wages are largely seen as favorable across the region.
Governments are using technology more and more in ways that can improve formalization, increase the availability of social services, and more effectively monitor and enforce labor rules.
It continued by praising new technology and the potential of digitization as a way to enhance employment possibilities and working conditions in a variety of industries.
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