Around 436 million companies worldwide are at risk of closure, according to the ILO

More than 436 million businesses around the world face a serious risk of interrupting their activities due to the crisis generated by COVID-19, warned the International Labour Organization (ILO) on Wednesday, calling for urgent measures to help these businesses and their employees. According to its third report on the effects of the pandemic on the labour market, the ILO estimates that some 232 million wholesale and retail businesses, 111 million in the tourism sector, 51 million in the hospitality industry and 42 million in other activities, such as real estate, are at serious risk.

"Millions of companies around the world are on the verge of collapse, without savings or access to credit. These are the true faces of the world of work, and if they are not helped now they will simply disappear," warned ILO Director-General Guy Ryder in a statement.

The Geneva-based agency therefore urges that measures taken in individual countries to revive the economy be based on a high level of job creation and supported "by stronger labour policies and institutions, and more extensive and better-resourced social protection systems". In addition, the ILO advises greater international coordination of the stimulus packages and initiatives to alleviate uncertainty so that "recovery is effective and sustainable".

In its report, the ILO predicts that, in the current second half of the year, due to containment and other measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus, 10.5% of working hours on the planet will be lost, equivalent to 305 million full-time jobs (at the beginning of this month the estimate was 195 million).

By region, the organization estimates that America is the most affected, with a loss of 12.4% of working hours, followed by Europe with 11.8%, while in the rest of the territories it would be above 9%.

The crisis has had a special negative impact on the informal economy, which is home to more than half of the world's workers (2,000 of the 3,300 million globally), so the ILO estimates that 1,300 million workers "are in imminent danger of seeing their sources of livelihood disappear," the organization warns.

In the first month of social isolation measures against the pandemic, the ILO estimates that these informal workers (not subject to contracts) lost 60% of their income worldwide, a percentage that was even higher in Africa and the Americas (81%) and in Europe and Central Asia (70%).

The ILO further reported that in the last two weeks the proportion of workers whose countries have imposed a moratorium on many activities due to the pandemic has fallen from 81 to 68 per cent, a decline caused mainly by the relaxation of measures against COVID-19 in China.