COVID-19 COULD RENDER 300-M PEOPLE JOBLESS WORLDWIDE-IMF

The COVID-19 crisis will have an even bigger negative impact on the global economy than initially thought, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned on June 24, 2020, teleSUR reported in its English news service.

IMF said the COVID-19 pandemic will have a "more negative impact" than expected on the world economy, which will also affect unemployment rates, with the global gross domestic product (GDP) contracting by 4.9 percent this year, much bigger than the 3 percent cut it predicted in April 2020.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a more negative impact on activity in the first half of 2020 than anticipated, and the recovery is projected to be more gradual than previously forecast,” the IMF said in its World Economy Outlook update.

The IMF said that “the steep decline in (economic) activity comes with a catastrophic hit to the global labor market,” indicating that the global decline in work hours in the second quarter of the year is likely to be equivalent to a loss of more than 300 million full-time jobs. “The hit to the labor market has been particularly acute for low-skilled workers who do not have the option of working from home. Income losses also appear to have been uneven across genders, with women among lower-income groups bearing a larger brunt of the impact in some countries,” the IMF said.