The United Nations expects that millions of potential jobs will vanish this year because of an economic slowdown triggered by US President Donald Trump’s trade war.
The International Labour Organization (ILO), a UN agency, predicts in a report released Wednesday that 53 million jobs will be created worldwide in 2025 — 7 million fewer than previously thought — owing to a shakier economic outlook caused by trade disruptions and geopolitical tensions.
The agency based its analysis on the International Monetary Fund’s downgraded expectations for the global economy. In April, the IMF said global GDP would rise by 2.8% this year, down from a previous estimate of 3.2%, citing the uncertainty unleashed by Trump’s barrage of new tariffs on America’s trading partners.
The ILO, which promotes labor rights worldwide, also said that almost 84 million jobs across 71 countries “are directly or indirectly tied to US consumer demand” and thus vulnerable to the impact of these tariffs. Nearly 56 million of these at-risk roles are in the Asia-Pacific region, it added, with more than 13 million spanning Canada and Mexico.
“Workers tied to US consumption and investment demand… now face elevated risks of partial or total income loss due to higher tariffs and the unpredictability of future trade measures,” the agency said.
Since Trump re-took office in January, he has hiked import duties on America’s trading partners and on key goods, including cars and steel. The president has set July 9 as the date he plans to impose punishingly high “reciprocal tariffs” on other countries unless those nations are able to strike a trade deal with Washington.
The tariffs, their erratic implementation and the unpredictability both have injected into the global economy are weighing on many businesses and consumers. The ILO noted that employers may be “more cautious” about hiring new workers in such an uncertain landscape.
“We know that the global economy is growing at a slower pace than we had anticipated it would,” Gilbert Houngbo, the ILO’s director general, said in a statement. “If geopolitical tensions and trade disruptions continue… then they will most certainly have negative ripple effects on labor markets worldwide.”
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