LONDON -- At least 225 million full-time jobs disappeared worldwide last year because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report published Monday by the International Labor Organization, losses four times worse than those of the global financial crisis in 2009. But the top income earners have seen their wealth soar.
According to another report released Monday, by anti-poverty nonprofit Oxfam, the combined wealth of the world's 10 richest men has risen by more than $500 billion since the crisis began -- enough to vaccinate the entire planet and then some, according to the organization.
Both sets of findings identify inequality as one of the pandemic's principal outcomes. "Job destruction has disproportionately affected low-paid and low‑skilled jobs," which "points to the risk of an uneven recovery, leading to still greater inequality in the coming years," the International Labor Organization found.
According to the report by the organization, a U.N. agency, 8.8% of global working hours were lost last year, It found "unprecedented disruption" among global labor markets, and that women and young people have been the hardest hit.
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Employment loss among 15-24 years old stood at 8.7%. The data "highlights the all too real risk of a lost generation," according to the report.
Guy Ryder, the director general of the organization, said during a news briefing that the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic had not only been greater than that of the financial crisis but also the Great Depression of the 1930s. Job losses, he said, were likely to continue through this year -- although he noted that battered economies could begin to rebuild once vaccination efforts begin to take effect.
"I am pleased to say that there is some relatively good news in all of this, that we do see tentative signs of recovery -- these signs are fragile, they are uncertain and the prospects are notably uneven," he said.
The Oxfam findings also suggest a slow path to economic recovery: It could take at least a decade for the world's poorest to recover from the effects of the health crisis while the 1,000 richest people have already made back their losses, and the wealthiest 10 have earned more than $500 billion amid the pandemic.
British lawmaker David Lammy of the Labor Party called the Oxfam findings "truly staggering."
Authors of the report said that the pandemic could trigger a simultaneous rise in inequality nearly everywhere, for the first time since records began.
"The virus has exposed, fed off and increased existing inequalities of wealth, gender and race," the report said.