Research and Analytics
Research and Analytics
The amount remitted by migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has grown tenfold in two decades, from $4.8 billion in 2000 to $48 billion in 2018. This reflects a steady increase in the number of people who decided to move in search of a better life: from 21.6 million in 2000, the number of migrants from Africa grew to 36.3 million in 2017.
The COVID-19 pandemic is devastating labor markets across the world. Tens of millions of workers lost their jobs, millions more out of the labor force altogether, and many occupations face an uncertain future. Social distancing measures threaten jobs requiring physical presence at the workplace or face-to-face interactions. Those unable to work remotely, unless deemed essential, face a significantly higher risk of reductions in hours or pay, temporary furloughs, or permanent layoffs. What types of jobs and workers are most at risk? Not surprisingly, the costs have fallen most heavily on those who are least able to bear them: the poor and the young in the lowest-paid jobs.
The World Bank’s Commodity Markets Outlook comes with large caveats including uncertainty over the pandemic’s duration and severity; the direction of energy and fertilizer prices; currency movements; changes to trade and domestic support policies; and possible disruptions in global supply chains.
By Davide Furceri, Prakash Loungani, and Jonathan D. Ostry / Image Credit: IMF The COVID-19 crisis is now widely seen as the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression. In January, the IMF expected global income to grow 3 percent; it is now forecast to fall 3 percent, much worse than during the Great Recession of 2008-09. […]
