Faltering  global employment growth and the pressure on decent working conditions risk undermining social justice, according to this World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2023 report by the ILO.

The current global economic slowdown 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 this new International Labour Organization (ILO) report. The ILO’s World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2023 (WESO Trends), also projects that global employment growth will be only 1.0 per cent in 2023, less than half the level in 2022. Global unemployment is slated to rise slightly in 2023, by around 3 million, to 208 million (corresponding to a global unemployment rate of 5.8 per cent). The moderate size of this projected increase is largely due to tight labour supply in high-income countries. This would mark a reversal of the decline in global unemployment seen between 2020-2022. It means that global unemployment will remain 16 million above the pre-crisis benchmark (set in 2019).