The intensifying economic effects of COVID-19 on the world of work could see nearly 200 million job losses in the next three months alone, the UN labour agency said.
The assessment follows last month’s warning from the International Labour Organization (ILO) that 25 million jobs were threatened by the new coronavirus.
According to the ILO, the latest dire assessment reflects the full or partial lockdown measures affecting almost 2.7 billion workers – four in five of the world’s workforce.
Concerns are also growing for around two billion people who work informally, most of them in emerging and developing countries.
“Hundreds of millions” of these informal workers have already been affected by COVID-19, especially in urban areas where they “carry a high risk of virus infection”, ILO said.
This includes Brazil and Nigeria and India, where almost 90 per cent of people work in the informal economy, and where about 400 million workers in the economy now face falling into greater poverty.
