THE International Labour Organisation (ILO) called for a “human-centred recovery” today, as it revealed that four times more jobs have been lost during the pandemic than during the 2008-09 bankers’ crash.

The United Nations agency said that global working hours had reduced by 8.8 per cent last year – equivalent to a staggering 255 million full-time jobs.

Director-general Guy Ryder said: “This has been the most severe crisis for the world of work since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Its impact is far greater than that of the global financial crisis of 2009.”

In a report, Covid-19 and the World of Work, the ILO said that women were worse affected than men and that younger people were also hit harder than average, “either losing jobs, dropping out of the labour force or delaying entry into it.”

The worst-affected sector was accommodation and food services, where employment declined by more than 20 per cent on average, followed by retail and manufacturing. By region, the Americas, Europe and central Asia suffered more than east Asia and Africa.

The report warned that with the lowest-paid workers more likely to have had their incomes reduced, the world risked an “uneven recovery, leading to still greater inequality.”

Mr Ryder said: “We are at a fork in the road. One path leads to an uneven, unsustainable recovery, with growing inequality and instability and the prospect of more crises. The other focuses on a human-centred recovery for building back better, prioritising employment, income and social protection, workers’ rights and social dialogue.”