Speakers at the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO’s) annual International Labour Conference (ILC) minced few words the other day, and rightly so, as they warned that already the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on the “world of work” was about four times worse than the 2008 financial crisis. Something that much worse than the once-in-a-lifetime Great Recession of a dozen or so years ago didn’t really need qualifying adjectives like “devastating” and “cataclysmic” because just the fact that it has pushed about 100 million workers back into poverty in just over a year is enough to send the entire world into deep shock. Going by present trends, global unemployment is expected to affect 205 million people in 2022, which is even higher than the 2019 figure of 187 million.
Employment trends aren’t expected to return to pre-pandemic levels till 2023 at the earliest. Yet while one would welcome even such expectations there is no way to count on them because the vaccine rollout isn’t exactly going according to plan in a large number of countries and there are even fears of a fourth wave of the coronavirus now hitting some countries in central Europe some time in the fall. If that turns out to be true, and there’s no telling yet what kind of mutated virus the next possible wave could bring, then all bets would be off on even the current international recovery plan that is being counted on very seriously by practically all of the world.
The situation is of course much grimmer for some countries than others. Pakistan has been one of those that handled the pandemic better than most countries in the whole world since the very beginning, despite a scare or two along the way, but others have not been so fortunate. India, especially, is now the global poster child for all that can go wrong very quickly. But that is precisely what happens when you have a very large population, much of it illiterate, and not much of a plan on the part of the government to keep them all safe, employed, and fed during the worst of the crisis. The new variant of the virus that emerged there - at least one case of which has also been observed and quarantined in Pakistan - spreads much more quickly, is far more lethal, and just goes to show the kind of complications that emerge when such situations spiral out of control. Now, on top of trying to put a lid on the spread of the original virus and all its earlier strains, they have also got everybody in the whole world running from pillar to post to quickly understand and contain the new variant as well.
The ILO could not hold its annual conference last year because of the pandemic, and its representatives could only meet digitally this year, which is why it is difficult to see how its focus on fostering a “human-centred recovery” this year is going to get anywhere. For, as noted in the conference there are “gross inequalities” in vaccine distribution, along with the difference in “fiscal firepower” at the disposal of different states to sprinkle stimulus packages and relief programmes on a suffering workforce. And since for some reason a lot of poor countries also have runaway population growth figures, their problems are multiplied many times and it is not immediately apparent how many of them can contribute to any “human-centred recovery” at the moment or even for a while down the road.
Perhaps the biggest difference between the 2008 crisis and this one is that the former was a systemic implosion and this one is completely exogenous that nobody could have been prepared for in any way even if they wanted. The virus in 2008 was subprime lending which spread through first the American and then the global financial system. But since it was from within the system it could still be rectified by throwing a lot of good, taxpayer money after bad money. How it was done may have left a little something to be desired, especially in the honest, taxpaying community that wronged nobody, but it was still possible to contain that particular brand of virus.
The coronavirus pandemic is very different, of course, because already it has all but dried the reserves of a number of struggling countries, Pakistan being no exception, and there’s still no telling when it will really go away. And the best that outfits like ILO can do till it does is keep authorities on their toes by reminding them of what has already been lost.
