The COVID 19 Pandemic which was formally declared by the WHO in January 2020, has had and continue to have deleterious and devastating impact on the world. As of 6th March 2021, more than 116 million cases have been reported globally, 65.7 million total recoveries, and 2.58 million fatalities as a result of the pandemic.
In Nigeria, since the first case was reported in February 2020, there have been a total of 158,042 confirmed cases, with 137,025 persons recovering from the disease, 19,063 active cases, and 1,954 fatalities. And out of an estimated population of over 200 million, only 1,544,008 samples have been tested, including repeat tests to check prognosis of confirmed cases, and make a determination as to the recovery status.
The world was already gravely unequal in many respects and across many dimensions long before the pandemic, however it seemed that the pandemic has and is making the world even more unequal. If the pandemic revealed anything with respect to inequality its was to confirm the scale and deep-rooted nature of systemic inequality between and within nations.
Poorer and less developed countries saw their underfunded, poorly equipped, understaffed public healthcare delivery system more quickly overwhelmed by the pandemic, than richer and more developed countries.
And within countries, poorer communities and less endowed communities bore a disproportionate burden of the pandemic, both in terms of the direct health consequences, as well as the socioeconomic impacts of the pandemic.
And according to a report by Oxfam in January 2021, released to coincide with the beginning of the World Economic Forum in Davos, “The pandemic also revealed that more than three billion people lacked access to healthcare and that three-quarters of workers had no social protections such as unemployment benefit or sick pay. In low- and lower-middle-income countries more than half of workers were in poverty despite having jobs, the report said.
In contrast, billionaires globally saw their wealth increase by $3.9 trillion between 18 March and 31 December 2020, the report said. Their total wealth now stands at $11.95 trillion, which is equivalent to the amount governments in the largest 20 developed and developing nations, or G20, have spent in response to the pandemic. ”
Furthermore, “the pandemic has hurt people living in poverty far harder than the rich and has had particularly severe effects on women, Black people, Afro-descendants, Indigenous Peoples, and historically marginalised and oppressed communities around the world, the report said. ”
And globally, “The increase in the 10 richest billionaires’ wealth since the crisis began is more than enough to prevent anyone on Earth from falling into poverty because of the virus, and to pay for a COVID-19 vaccine for everyone. ”
It is thus very clear that if there is an urgent lesson to be learned from the pandemic, it is a reinforcement of the view that human rights are fundamental, and indivisible, and as such all ought to be equally guaranteed, protect, and enforced by governments. The pandemic has shown that it makes no sense to distinguish between socioeconomic rights, like the right to healthcare and to housing, from civil and political rights, like the right to assemble and free speech, for instance.
Poorer communities, with poor access to quality healthcare, and living in inhumane and subhuman conditions, both within and between countries, have been hit hardest by the pandemic.
While the COVID 19 Pandemic globally revealed and brought into full glare, the gross and systemic nature of inequalities, between countries, and within countries; in the specific instance of Nigeria, it has not only exposed the underbelly of grave inequalities in the country, it has further made manifest the glaring historic failure of governance and parlous state of social services delivery and access in the country.
*COVID 19 And the World of Work*
Globally, the ravaging impact of the pandemic, as well as the impact of the public health measures in response to the pandemic on workers and on the world of work, in both formal and informal sectors of the economy, have been quite severe, and of near calamitous proportion.
In Nigeria for instance, the National Bureau of Statistics [NBS] had projected in May 2020 that unemployment would increase from 23.1% [that is 20.9m people] at the end of 2018, to 33.6% [about 39.4m people] by the end of 2020.
In specific terms, according to the Q2 2020 unemployment report of the NBS, unemployment rose from 23.1% in Q3 2018 to 27.1% in Q2 2020, while underemployment rose from 20.1% in Q3 2018 to 28.6% in Q2 2020.
Amongst youth aged 15 to 34 years however, unemployment was even more severe, with the unemployment rate for this age group rising from 29.7% in Q3 2018 to 34.9% in Q2 2020; while underemployment equally rose from 25.7% in Q3 2018 to 28.2% in Q2 2020.
The implication of the foregoing is that the pandemic continued and worsened the rising unemployment rate in the country, and that already by the end of June 2020, composite unemployment rate [unemployment and underemployment rates combined] in the general population had shot up from 43.2% in Q3 2018 to 55.7% in Q2 2020 [a rise of 8.5%] – that is more than 2 out of every 5 persons unemployed; while composite unemployment rate among youths had shot up to 55.4% in Q3 2018 to 63.1% in Q2 2020 [a rise of 7.6%] – meaning over 3 out of every 5 young persons unemployed.
The UNDP in a 2020 Human Development Perspectives report titled COVID 19 and Human Development: Assessing the crisis and Envisioning the Recovery, had described the crisis engendered by the pandemic as a systemic crisis in human development, and while noting that this is not the first pandemic to be faced by humanity, had however noted that “But this pandemic has been unprecedented because of its evolution from a health shock to an economic and social crisis. Social distancing and the pause in nonessential business have slowed human activities. The International Labour Organization projects that in the second quarter of 2020, working hours will fall by the equivalent of 195 million full-time workers.19 Unlike other crises, employment is being hit through two main channels. A contraction in labour demand comes from reduced human activity and the wealth effects of the global recession. And a short-term drop in labour supply comes from the suspension of nonessential productive activities in several countries. ”
The pandemic has impacted on and affected the world of work in varying ways. There are the direct health related impact with respect to illnesses and getting sick, as well as fatalities among workers, on the one hand.
There are also the impact associated with job loses, livelihoods loses, income loses, and massive income reductions, that result from partial to full shutdowns of economies, affecting production value chains, and severely constraining supply and demand for goods and services across the world.
In the 7th edition of the ILO Monitor, titled ‘COVID 19 and the World of Work’, and published on the 25th of January 2021, the ILO has the following key messages around which it proposed that urgent action was needed;
“Latest labour market developments
Workplace closures:
The share of workers living in countries with COVID-19‑related restrictions has remained high, with 93 per cent of the world’s workers residing in countries with some form of workplace closure measures in place in early January 2021. Within countries, more geographically targeted and sector-specific measures have gradually become the norm over the course of the pandemic, and these were still affecting 77 per cent of workers at the start of the year (close to the peak of 85 per cent reached in late July 2020).
Working-hour losses in 2020:
New annual estimates confirm that labour markets around the world were disrupted in 2020 on a
historically unprecedented scale. In 2020, 8.8 per cent of global working hours were lost relative to the fourth quarter of 2019, equivalent to 255 million full-time jobs. Working-hour losses were particularly high in Latin America and the Caribbean, Southern Europe and Southern Asia. Working-hour losses in 2020 were approximately four times greater than during the global financial crisis in 2009. Breaking down these annual figures, revised quarterly estimates reveal how the situation evolved throughout the year. Estimates of working-hour losses in the third quarter of 2020 have been revised substantially downwards to 7.2 per cent (from 12.1 per cent in the sixth edition of the ILO Monitor), reflecting a stronger-than-expected rebound in working hours, especially in lower-middle-income
countries. In the fourth quarter, global working hours declined by 4.6 per cent, equivalent to 130 million full-time jobs. ”
What is important to note from these however, is that over all some of the most severe impacts have been around Workplace Closures – with 93% of global work force still living in countries with some form of work closures in January 2021; As well as Working Hour Loses – with 8.85 of global working hours lost in 2020 relative to Q4 2019, equivalent to 255 million jobs, a scale described as historically unprecedented.
The resultant effect of the loses due to work closures and working hour loses is the other dimension of labour income loses, with “Global labour income (before taking into account income support measures) in 2020 is estimated to have declined by 8.3 per cent, which amounts to US$3.7 trillion, or 4.4 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP). ”
Again, as with the impact of the pandemic on human population in general, there is also a disproportionate impact on the world of work depending on which sector of the economy, and how the sector is impacted by the public health measures resulting in work closures, and on how the socioeconomic stimulus measures in response to the impact of the pandemic has affected the different sectors of the economy.
In Nigeria for instance, the shutdown of the economy and the resultant work closures impacted the different sectors of the economy differently. The transport sector, and in particular aviation; the hospitality sector, and the education sector were for instance more severely impacted with full closures.
Similarly, the informal sector operators and operations were directly severely impacted by the closure of markets and malls, while also being indirectly severely impacted by curbs on transportation and the movement of goods, services and humans.
Other sectors in contrast were either less severely impacted, or were even boosted by the pandemic. For instance, online marketing and delivery services have grown in direct response to the impact of the pandemic.
This trend is borne out by “The latest labour force survey data (up to the third quarter of 2020) reveal the contrast between massive job losses in hard‑hit sectors (such as accommodation and food services, arts and culture, retail, and construction) and the positive job growth evident in a number of higher skilled services sectors (such as information and communication, and financial and insurance activities). This divergence will tend to increase inequality within countries. At the same time, there is considerable variation across countries with regard to the severity of the impact of the crisis on jobs in the hardest-hit sectors. ”
