NEW YORK, United States — A man wearing a protective mask rides a bicycle on April 21, 2020 in the Queens borough of New York City. Daily death toll numbers related to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continue to trend downward in the tri-state region, but New York City has surpassed 132,000 cases since the outbreak. (Photo: AFP)

GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — The novel coronavirus pandemic is severely impacting jobs and output around the world, with tourism and car manufacturing particularly hard hit, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said yesterday.

“The COVID-19 crisis is having a devastating effect on workers and employers,” the ILO said, with “massive losses, both of output and jobs across all sectors”.

But the Geneva-based United Nations agency said that in any lifting of lockdown measures staff should only return to work if they had proper protection, to prevent recurrence of the pandemic.

“The world of work is facing the worst global crisis since World War II,” Alette van Leur, the ILO’s sectoral policies director, told reporters in a virtual briefing.

“The economic impact of the pandemic is likely to be severe and sustained.”

She said both the supply and demand sides of the labour market were in a “major” crisis.

Especially hard hit was the travel and tourism sector, which contributed 3.2 per cent of global gross domestic product in 2018, with related secondary industries taking that figure up to 10.4 per cent, ILO said.

It cited figures suggesting the sector, which accounted for 319 million jobs worldwide in 2018 or 10 per cent of global employment, could contract by between 45 and 70 per cent.

“The impact on the tourism sector is absolutely enormous,” said Mariangels Fortuny, head of the ILO’s forestry, agriculture, construction and tourism unit.

The European Union’s tourism industry alone is estimated to be losing around 1 billion euros (US$1.1 billion) in revenue per month.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/business-report/virus-crisis-devastating-jobs-output-ilo_192528