Richard Samans, the International Labour Organization’s G20 Sherpa is of the opinion that the G20 has taken forward work on skilling and providing social security for gig and platform workers, which have been notable achievements of India’s presidency. In an interview to Business Today on the sidelines of the G20 Leaders Summit, he also said that India has asked the ILO and OECD to extend their skills for job database that would help with skill mapping. Edited excerpts:
Q: Has the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic on wages receded?
RS: All of this remains a big issue in the world. It was a big issue before the pandemic, and then the pandemic had a major impact in most parts of the world. But our global numbers suggest that the effects of the pandemic on the world of work has significantly receded, such that we estimate that the global unemployment rate will actually fall very slightly by about a 10th of a percent in the current year. That's not a lot, it's basically stable. And that translates into an estimated decline in the number of unemployed by about a million people globally. But that's on a base of over 200 million people. But at a more disaggregated level, most of the recovery is taking place in the higher income countries where the labor markets have become tighter. And the recovery has been much slower in developing countries. In fact, in Africa, and in Arab speaking countries, we don't see the recovery coming this year, it's not going to return to pre-Covid levels. In India, we have seen tracking kind of the global trends in this regard.
Q: What about social protection?
RS: The silver lining, one might say about the effects of the pandemic on the world of work is that many countries introduced extensions of their social protection systems, because of how serious the crisis was. A significant proportion of those countries have extended those social protection measures even beyond the Covid period. And I know that the Indian government is one that has been on a long process of trying to deepen and widen your social protection coverage. One of the significant outcomes on the world of work of this G20 has been in the social protection area, which I think is partly inspired by the Indian government's own efforts to extend social protection coverage to gig and platform workers. That became an important element of the work on employment issues here during the year such that there was a consensus agreement in the G20 that you will see in the declaration on a set of policy priorities for extending social protection to gig and platform workers. It’s a patchwork quilt around the world and even within countries.
Q: What do you see as the impact of global growth slowdown on employment? The ILO had earlier this year said global employment growth is expected to slow down to 1% in 2023 compared to 2% in 2022. Do you expect an improvement in employment outlook for 2024?
RS: Thus far, we have been projecting in 2024, similar pattern to 2023, which was not a major improvement, but not a deterioration. In January this year, we began reporting a more representative statistic on unemployment, called the Global Jobs Gap. This is a measure of the unmet demand for employment. There the numbers are somewhat less encouraging than the unemployment numbers, particularly among women. It's much larger among women and men. We project the Global Jobs gap to be about 453 million people around the world, or 11.7 per cent, nearly 12 per cent. That's about double the traditional unemployment rate. And that gives you a sense of the larger problem that we have here. The number for women is about 15 per cent and for men about a little under 10 per cent. So it's more significant for women, there's a significant gender gap, not only in wages, but also in terms of employment opportunity.
Q: The gender gap in employment in India is huge because the women's labor force participation rate is much lower when you compare it even to other countries. What is the ILO's view on this?
RS: The Indian situation is interesting, and a little bit difficult to follow as there may be different things going on. The measurements might not have been all that accurate and more women are going into education and that might be part of what you see in the statistics. It's still a problem but the precise measurement of it even we have a little bit of caution, because your numbers have actually worsened. We may think it may be partly a statistical issue, partly because of the gains that are being made by having women go into skilling and education. It seems to be concentrated in the rural areas, as opposed to urban areas. In the urban areas, it's more in the rural areas. But stepping back from those technical issues, many countries have this problem. India is not alone in this regard. Part of it has to do with care responsibilities in the home and an unequal part of that is the cultural aspect, on which the government policy can help. What a number of governments have done is to try to strengthen various policies that improve the support for caregiving. India is a lower middle income country so the safety nets are not as well developed yet. The Indian government is on a journey like many governments around the world in trying to have an impact on this.
Q: What according to the ILO is the impact of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence on employment? That's a rising concern across the world…
RS: Yes, there's a lot of hype around this and there's a lot of fear and anticipation about Artificial Intelligence. But the reality is everyone speculating at this point, it's very difficult. We also have done some empirical analysis on generative AI that came out a couple of weeks ago. Generative AI is more affecting the service sector in particular. We've done some projections based on that, which suggests that a lot of the big hype about net job loss may not be so likely. It more likely may cause a disruption within existing jobs. AI can be applied as a productivity enhancer, which means that the composition of tasks changes. That means that the worker has to change the portfolio of skill sets. But the implications for people and for governments are essentially the same in either case, which is that there needs to be much more investment in helping people re-skill and adapt on one hand. On the other hand, the policy focus really needs to be on ensuring that the application and implementation of these technologies by companies is done in a sensitive way. We need to invest more in people, invest more in skills. It's a responsibility not only of companies but also governments. These are some of the things that I think that the G20 and other intergovernmental groupings will begin to have quite a discussion about.
Q: Are you happy with how the G20 has addressed issues on skilling because that was a big part of India's agenda?
RS: India's provided some real leadership in this area. The outcome was a good one here. They've asked the ILO and the OECD to extend our skills for jobs database, so that we get a more consistent and more updated database that countries can go to and see how they're doing relative to other countries. India is driving some more work in mapping skills. And they've asked us and the OECD, to undertake a study over the next year to see whether we could develop a consistent international reference framework for what occupations require what skills. We will do a feasibility study on the study next year and, that could form the basis of skills mapping that is consistent across countries. India has been very interested in this because India exports skilled people. So it wants to use that kind of a framework or a map, so that there could be interoperability of India's own skills, qualification and credential system with those of countries getting Indian skilled labor. Not all countries are there. But they all agreed that this would be a useful exercise to undertake from a technical level. So, that's another important outcome.
Q: What are your views on the gig economy and issues of social protection around it?
RS: The ILO has an established principle on universal social protection and all countries have agreed with that principle. It's a work in progress for all societies, India included. And the principle here is that labor protections and social protection should extend to all workers irrespective of whether they're in a traditional formal, salaried, contractual relationship, or they're in the informal economy. And so yes, we are encouraging countries to move along this way. The Indian government has passed a Code on it in 2020 and it’s in the process of applying these rules. The G20 has asked us and the International Social Security Administration to put together an analysis of different approaches in this regard around the world, which we will do overtime.