The UN warns of world stagnation in working circumstances and fears a worse future | Economy | EUROtoday

“Recovering progress seems a daunting task in the face of the challenges that loom over the world of work,” says Gilbert F. Houngbo, director of the International Labor Organization (ILO), within the textual content with which the report begins. Social and employment tendencies in 2026. That phrase concentrates the primary thought derived from this annual publication, one of many references to diagnose the momentum labor on this planet and revealed this Wednesday: the advance in working circumstances is struggling and the worldwide context doesn’t invite optimism. The ILO, the UN company specialised on this planet of labor, warns that progress within the high quality of employment has stagnated, that irregular employment is rising, that the rise in productiveness doesn’t promote “decent” work, that there are imminent dangers that threaten to extend unemployment and that the already troublesome circumstances of entry to employment for younger folks will be worsened by synthetic intelligence (AI).

In its report, the ILO signifies that the proportion of employees in excessive poverty decreased 3.1 share factors from 2015 to 2025, to 7.9%, in distinction to the lower of 15 factors within the earlier decade. “The resulting figure is 284 million workers in extreme poverty (with a daily income of less than three dollars),” the report signifies. At the identical time, within the final ten years the proportion of casual employees, these employed in B, has elevated. “Informality is usually linked to a lower quality of employment,” signifies the ILO, which predicts that the variety of employees on this state of affairs will climb to 2.1 billion worldwide in 2026.

On the opposite hand, ILO specialists warn of a “loss of momentum” within the transition of economies in direction of sectors with increased productiveness and higher working circumstances, in direction of extra certified actions, which “represents a critical impediment to making firm progress in reducing decent work deficits.” This phenomenon “is one of the main trends that slows down not only the improvement in the quality of work in the world, but also the growth of productivity,” the report provides.

Increased productiveness, which in keeping with the report’s authors “tends to push up wages and, over time, contributes to employment growth,” is threatened by the worldwide context. The ILO director believes that “uncertainty in economic and trade policies continues to inhibit investment and trade, hindering productivity growth and the creation of quality jobs.”

Employment resists

This antagonistic context, with the rise of protectionist insurance policies (which discover their best expression within the tariffs imposed by the United States), has not been an obstacle for international labor markets to indicate “resilience” by way of quantity, in keeping with the researchers. They don’t see job destruction or a rise in unemployment within the final 12 months, nor do they venture it for 2026, however on the similar time they insist that the standard of employment does undergo and that the projections are usually not promising. “Stable labor markets are not synonymous with healthy labor markets,” summarizes ILO analysis director Caroline Fredrickson.

Although employment doesn’t undergo in numbers worldwide (and can develop by 1% in 2026, barely beneath the typical of the earlier decade), the ILO sees threats that would complicate the situation: “On the near horizon, risks related to the increase in sovereign debt, uncertainty surrounding trade policy and disruptive transformations derived from artificial intelligence persist.” The ILO dedicates a particular part to analyzing the chance that this new expertise entails for certified younger folks. “Preliminary data in high-income countries indicate that, as a result of the adoption of AI, young people with advanced education may find it more difficult to enter the labor market,” the researchers point out.

Based on an evaluation by threat of publicity to AI, they conclude that “younger individuals (aged 15 to 24) with an advanced educational level are more exposed to the risk of automation than their counterparts with a lower educational level.” “Although the full impact of AI on youth employment remains uncertain, its potential magnitude deserves close monitoring,” insists the UN labor company.

On the opposite hand, the ILO calculates that the estimated international unemployment price is 4.9% (in Spain it’s 10.5%) and that there are 186 million unemployed folks on this planet. This group believes that the exercise price (the proportion of individuals of working age who accomplish that or at the very least search employment) will proceed to fall because of the getting older of the inhabitants and can stand at 60.5% in 2027. In 2025, girls solely represented two-fifths of world employment, “which indicates the existence of significant obstacles to accessing employment,” provides the ILO.

Stagnant wages

The group additionally pays consideration to the evolution of remuneration. And, at a world degree, he considers that buying energy has not recovered from shock inflationary derived from the Russian invasion of Ukraine: “The growth of real wages and labor income in the world continues to be insufficient to compensate for the losses in real income caused by the rise in inflation in the period from 2022 to 2024.” One of the indications that the ILO insists on most to measure this phenomenon is the burden that labor earnings represents with respect to complete world earnings: in 2025 it was 52.6%, nonetheless beneath the earlier degree to the pandemic (53% in 2019).

“The stagnation of this indicator denotes that real wages have not grown at the same pace as labor productivity,” provides the ILO, which on the similar time factors to better stress on employers: “Although in 2024 aggregate real wages, measured by the consumer price index, were below their 2019 level in high-income countries, producers faced higher real labor costs according to the producer price index.”

“Despite the resilience of global unemployment rates in the face of economic uncertainty, the world continues to fail to achieve significant reductions in decent work deficits,” concludes the report, which forecasts a rise in poor-quality employment “after the prolonged period of improvement observed in past decades.”