BALI, Indonesia
The job losses around the world are expected to continue with the impact of the overall economic situation but also as a result of the transformation pressures linked to the greening of the economy and digitalization, Bettina Schaller, president of the World Employment Confederation, told Anadolu Agency on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Bali.
Pointing out that the job cuts in the technology sector are quite heavy, she said the numbers are up to 100,000 for the whole sector among the big companies.
The number of technology companies cutting jobs reached 800 worldwide.
The US technology sector saw over 52,000 job cuts by the end of October 2022, particularly at companies like Twitter, Lyft, and Meta. Amazon’s latest plan to cut 10,000 jobs has just been unveiled.
“Our reading of this is that, actually, it is the result of wrong assumptions made in the industry. They thought the growth they saw within the COVID times and after would be maintained,” Schaller said.
“So, there were disproportionately high hirings. Lots of people were hired. It is true that with the economic crisis, jobs are falling around the world, and projections and planning did not work out the way they did.”
Schaller said that the companies had to realize that they had to adjust to the developments in relation to the economic crisis.
“We do expect that there will be further job losses. In addition to the economic situation, there is the effect of more with the transformation pressures linked to the greening of the economy and digitalization,” she explained, noting that the companies realized they do not have the right people for those jobs.
Thus, Schaller noted there would be a huge shift and synchronization element in the labor markets and what we see now is just all these crises are happening at the same time.
The old industries like automotive are seeing the skills shift, Schaller explained, adding that the energy sector also will be hit by that swift very heavily.
About 10 million vacancies in US and 10 million in G20 countries
On the contrary, she said there are many jobs around the world, like about 10 million vacancies in the US and the same proportion of vacancies in G-20 countries.
“These jobs that are open can be filled again depending on the skills,” Schaller noted, adding that there is high demand for job vacancies in new talents and not enough supply.
She noted that the sectors that are recruiting or need to recruit heavily are the health sector, along with the aerospace, airlines, ground services at the airports and tourism sector, which has not recovered entirely yet.
“In the technology sector, with all the respect I have for the people who lost their jobs, they will find new jobs. The question is whether it is at the same wage or in the technology sector. Very likely not. There have to be adjustments there.
“In the global system, we are going to see that it will not work smoothly. Thus, there will be more unemployment because of this,” she said.
60% of people worldwide in informal employment
Schaller pointed out that there is still 60% of people who are not in formal employment globally, estimating that this corresponds to about 1 billion people.
“This is what we must not forget if we talk about the global employment picture. There are different reasons for that, from wages to the element of culture,” she said.
Speaking on the people who are also quitting their jobs as they are not happy with their jobs, Schaller said that as a response to this, there had been a massive increase in salaries in some places.
Particularly in Europe, most countries saw massive strikes in different sectors as they asked for further salaries in their jobs due to the high inflation and high cost of living.
“However, the projections on inflation are actually that it will go down eventually. That is why we have not seen so far great rounds of negotiation around salaries in countries like Germany, France and Italy,” she said.
