Arab Region Has the Highest Unemployment Levels in the World

The UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) and the International Labour Organization issued a report stating that the Arab region had the highest levels of unemployment worldwide, especially among women and young people. 14.3 million people were already unemployed before the COVID-19 pandemic, but the pandemic has increased pressure on Arab labor markets, causing more than 39 million individuals in hard-hit sectors to have reduced wages/hours of work or being laid off. 

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed the weaknesses of the education system in the region, at least in terms of infrastructure, access to technology, and teachers’ skills. Even the attempt to shift to e-learning has been a challenge for the Arab region. 

The report also states that skills mismatches in the Arab world likely occur for the following reasons:

• Poor quality of education and irrelevance of educational and training systems to the labor market. According to ESCWA calculations based on data from the World Bank’s Enterprise Survey, almost 40% of firm owners claim that the inadequately educated workforce is an obstacle in the Arab region;

• Lack of career guidance and orientation towards relevant fields of education;

• Individual preferences for working in the public sector and investing in skills suitable for public-sector jobs, irrespective of the skills needed by the private sector;

• Unfair access to education: many individuals cannot afford access to quality education that would enable them to get value-added jobs in the labor market;

• Imperfect information in the labor market: suitable workers and firms have difficulties finding each other; 

• Creation of low-quality jobs requiring low skills and minimal education, influenced by the growth of informal non-productive jobs.

Rola Dashti, the Executive Secretary of ESCWA, stressed the lack of gender equality in Arab labor markets, as women hold few top management positions and have lower shares as business owners. The increase in female labor participation rate was 2.76% between 2000-2020 but was matched with an average growth of 3.4% in female unemployment. 

In Arab, 64% of the total employment is also informal, which means own-account workers (without hired workers) that operate an informal enterprise. Meanwhile, political unrest and conflicts remain a primary obstacle in the region, impairing enterprise performance, affecting investor and consumer confidence, and subsequently limiting investment and consumption.

Heavy Job Losses Causes Employment Crisis in the First Half of 2021 in Myanmar

Estimates released by the International Labour Organization (ILO) suggest that Myanmar is experiencing significant deterioration in its labor market conditions since the military took power in February this year. The economy is already weakened by the COVID-19 pandemic, with over 60,000 workers across the country losing their jobs due to factory shutdowns caused by canceled orders and the COVID-19 pandemic's disruption of raw material supplies.

The United Nations estimates that employment contracted 6% in the second quarter of 2021 compared to the fourth quarter of 2020, reflecting 1.2 million job losses. In the first half of 2021, an estimated 14% of working hours were lost, which is equivalent to the working time of at least 2.2 million full-time workers. In terms of both working-hour and employment losses, women are estimated to have been impacted more than men.

Many sectors have been hard hit following the military takeover. In the first half of 2021, employment in construction, garments, and tourism, and hospitality decreased by an estimated 35%, 31%, and 25%, respectively, with even higher relative losses in working hours. 

Tourism and hospitality, still impacted by the slowdown in 2020 caused by COVID-19, have been unable to recover and took a further hit since the military takeover. Most international flights and visa issues have remained suspended due to COVID-19 and security concerns, and domestic travel has largely ceased. 

Circumstances since February 2021 might have forced or incentivized a large number of workers to reduce their working hours, with associated income losses, adding to the adverse impacts on a labor market that had already come under severe strain as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Factors that might have played a role include curfews and other restrictions imposed by the military regime, fear of exposure to violence when going to and being at the workplace, electricity and internet cuts, greater security risks for businesses, a decrease in consumer demand, as well as large-scale worker strikes.