World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2023 (an ILO report)

On 16 January 2023, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) launched the new flagship report on the impact of the economic slowdown on the global labour market, providing a comprehensive overview in light of various crises and international conflicts.
It shows that the current situation is likely to force more workers to accept lower quality, poorly paid jobs which lack job security and social protection, so accentuating inequalities exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis.

According to the report, global employment growth will be only 1.0 per cent in 2023, less than half the level in 2022,

while global unemployment is slated to rise slightly in 2023, reaching an unemployment rate of 5.8 per cent), signing a reversal of the decline in global unemployment seen between 2020-2022.

In addition to unemployment, the quality of work becomes crucial, especially in the context of increasing poverty linked to a cost of living crisis and rising prices, resulting in a shortage of better job opportunities.

This is compounded by a significant drop in income during the Covid-19 crisis, especially for low-income groups.

The report underlines that stagflation - simultaneously high inflation and low growth - conditions threaten productivity and labour market recovery, also due to emerging geopolitical tensions and the conflict in Ukraine, the uneven resurgence of pandemics and continuing bottlenecks in global supply chains.

Women and young people remain the hardest hit by the crisis in the labour markets: globally, the labour force participation rate for women stands at 47.4 per cent in 2022, compared to 72.3 per cent for men, while the unemployment rate for young people (aged 15 to 24) is three times higher than for adults.

The report also shows that the labour market outlook for 2023 varies widely from region to region: in 2023, Africa and the Arab States are expected to see employment growth of about 3 per cent or more and a modest decline in unemployment rates (from 7.4 to 7.3 per cent in Africa and from 8.5 to 8.2 per cent in the Arab States). In Asia and the Pacific and in Latin America and the Caribbean, annual employment growth is expected to be around 1 per cent, and in Europe and Central Asia, which are particularly affected by the economic consequences of the conflict in Ukraine, employment is expected to fall in 2023 and unemployment rates to rise slightly.

Reducing the employment gap, strengthening the quality of employment and protecting people's incomes will require renewed coordination of political forces and a major social dialogue.

Gilbert F. Houngbo, ILO Director-General, commented: “The need for more decent work and social justice is clear and urgent. But if we are to meet these multiple challenges, we must work together to create a new global social contract. The ILO will be campaigning for a Global Coalition for Social Justice to build support, create the policies needed, and prepare us for the future of work.”