A new report from the International Labor Organization (ILO), reveals that Africa and the Arab States are expected to experience job growth of around 3% or more in 2023.
Entitled “World Employment and Social Issues: Trends 2023”, the ILO report points out, however, that due to the increase in their working-age population, the two regions are expected to register only a modest decline in unemployment rate (from 7.4 to 7.3% in Africa and from 8.5 to 8.2% in the Arab States).
In addition, the ILO notes that the Europe and Central Asia region is particularly affected by the economic fallout from the conflict in Ukraine, stressing that while employment is expected to decline in 2023, unemployment rates are expected to increase only slightly given the context of limited growth in the working-age population. In the regions of Asia and the Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean, annual employment growth is expected to reach around 1 per cent. In North America, employment gains will be weak or nil and unemployment will start to rise again, according to the report.
According to Richard Samans, Director of the ILO’s Research Department and coordinator of the report, “due to the slowdown in global employment growth, we do not expect to be able to compensate for the losses suffered during the Covid-19 crisis. before 2025”.
And to add that “the decline in productivity growth is also of great concern to us, because productivity is essential to address the interrelated crises we face in purchasing power, ecological sustainability and well-being. human “.