COVID-19’s Negative Impact on Tourism Employment in Asia and the Pacific Countries

According to a brief from the ILO, tourism in the Asia-Pacific countries has been suffering from job losses, deterioration in work quality, and shifts toward increased informality. Evidence from five countries - Brunei Darussalam, Mongolia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam - demonstrates that job losses in tourism-related sectors in 2020 were four times greater than in non-tourism sectors. 

About ⅓ of the total job losses were linked to the tourism sector, with an estimated 1.6 million tourism-related jobs lost in these five countries alone. The ILO also estimates that pandemic-induced job losses will continue to drag down the region’s economies well into 2022. Even as borders reopen, international tourist arrivals are predicted to be slow in the near term. Given this, governments in tourism-rich countries are likely to seek broader economic diversification with the ultimate aim to create new employment opportunities in non-tourism sectors.

The pandemic did not affect all workers to the same extent. Women workers appear to have been particularly hit with an increased concentration of women carrying out food and beverage serving activities, the lowest-paid jobs in the sector.

A heavy impact on enterprises and workers in tourism at the country level:

• In the Philippines, employment losses and decreases in average working hours in 2020 were among the largest. Employment in the sector contracted by 28% (compared to an 8% loss in non-tourism-related sectors) and average hours worked by 38%. Workers in the tourism-related sector working zero hours per week rose two thousand-fold (affecting 775,000 workers).

• In Vietnam, the dire consequences of the crisis on the tourism sector were reflected primarily in decreasing wages and increased informality. Average tourism wages fell by nearly 18%, with the decline for women employees even higher at almost 23%. While the number of informal employees in tourism increased by 3% in 2020, the number of formal employees decreased by 11%.

• The impact of the crisis on tourism employment in Thailand was more muted, yet contractions in wages and working hours were stark, and jobs in the sector contracted. In contrast, jobs in non-tourism-related sectors experienced a slight gain. Average wages in the tourism sector decreased by 9.5% as tourism workers moved into lower-paid jobs like food and beverage serving activities. Average hours worked declined by 10 percent. In the first quarter of 2021, employment was below pre-crisis numbers in all tourism-related sub-sectors other than food and beverage serving activities.

• The tourism sector in Brunei Darussalam was hard hit in terms of both lower employment and fewer average hours worked, which contracted by more than 40% and nearly 21%, respectively. It was also the country that saw the largest difference between employment losses in tourism and non-tourism-related sectors.

• Likewise, in Mongolia, tourism employment and average working hours suffered considerably from the pandemic and contracted correspondingly by almost 17% and more than 13%. The impact on employment among male tourism workers was particularly sizable, falling by around 29%.

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. 

ILO’s Global Campaign for Ratification of Violence and Harassment

The International Labour Organization Convention 190 on violence and harassment in the world of work held a convention on June 25th, 2021. Many global unions will be launching a toolkit to support the Convention 190 (C190) and its Recommendation 206 (R206). This manual will provide many unions worldwide with tools to eradicate violence and harassment in the world of work. Millions of workers are affected by physical assault, bullying, sexual harassment, online abuse, economic violence, and abusive work practices globally. These are some of the most widespread forms of violence in the workforce. 

The COVID-19 pandemic deepened pre-existing inequalities and exposed vulnerabilities in social, political, and economic systems. A report by the UN shows that violence against women has intensified in the past year. Many women and girls felt economic impacts, and the global gender pay gap is stuck at 16%, with women paid up to 35% less than men in some countries. 

The toolkit will aim to provide unions with tools to develop workplace solutions that tackle violence and harassment with a special focus on gender-based violence and harassment and ensure that violence is not considered “part of the job.” 

Christy Hoffman, UNI Global Union General Secretary, said:

“Unions fought relentlessly to win this Convention. Now that it has come into force, we must make sure more countries ratify it and that it is properly implemented. There is still a long road ahead and this toolkit is another step for unions to gain the necessary knowhow that will enable them to put the ILO Convention 190 and Recommendation 206 into practice so that workers live in a world free from violence and harassment.”

The toolkit consists of a facilitators’ guide and an activities workbook. It aims to:

• Encourage discussion about violence and harassment and gender-based violence in the world of work.

• Raise awareness about Convention 190, its accompanying Recommendation R206, and its significance for workers – particularly women workers.

• Encourage unions across the world to campaign for the ratification of Convention 190 and its effective implementation in line with Recommendation 206.

• Encourage unions to use these instruments to integrate Convention 190 into the union bargaining agenda.

• Build stronger unions to enable workers to assert their rights to a world of work free from violence and harassment.

ILO and Vietnam Cooperate to Promote International Labor Standards and Decent Work For All

Vietnam’s Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on May 20 regarding cooperation in accelerating the implementation of ILO conventions in Vietnam for the next ten years. The document was signed on 20 May 2021 for the 2021-2030 period. 

This partnership includes raising awareness of the international labor standards, applying the ILO Conventions to Vietnamese laws, promoting the national capacity to implement and develop proposals for ratifying further ILO conventions. MoLISA Minister Dao Ngoc Dung states that the alliance is an important event that marks a new period of cooperation for the country. This helps the Vietnamese Government realize common goals regarding human rights, citizen rights, and employment relationships. 

Chang Hee Lee, Vietnam’s Country Director for ILO, has made significant contributions to achievements in labor and employment. He helped Vietnam urge the EU to ratify the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), amending the 2019 Labour Code, improving the MoLISA’s State management capacity, and raising the country’s position in the ILO. 

“If all goes as planned, Viet Nam will become a leading country among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states in promoting international labor standards. I believe that it will lead to social upgrading, which is required for Vietnam to move towards becoming an upper-middle-income country,” says Change Hee Lee.

Vietnam has ratified 25 ILO Conventions to date, including seven out of eight fundamental conventions ranging from collective bargaining, non-discrimination, child labor, and forced labor.