"ILO research highlights massive COVID-19 impact on tourism employment in Asia and the Pacific", 18 November 2021

The outsized impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on employment in the tourism sector in Asia and the Pacific  has been confirmed by new research from the International Labour Organization (ILO).

[...]

A heavy impact on enterprises and workers in tourism at country level

• In the Philippines, employment losses and decreases in average working hours in 2020 were among the largest. Employment in the sector contracted by 28 per cent (compared to an 8 per cent loss in non-tourism related sectors) and average hours worked by 38 per cent. Workers in the tourism-related sector working zero hours per week rose two thousand-fold (affecting 775,000 workers).
• In Viet Nam [...] [a]verage tourism wages fell by nearly 18 per cent, with the decline for women employees even higher at almost 23 per cent. [...][...].
• [I]n Thailand [...] [a]verage wages in the tourism sector decreased by 9.5 per cent overall as tourism workers [...]. Average hours worked declined by 10 per cent. [...]
• The tourism sector in Brunei Darussalam was hard hit in terms of both lower employment and fewer average hours worked, which contracted by more than 40 per cent and nearly 21 per cent respectively. [...]
• Likewise, in Mongolia, tourism employment and average working hours suffered considerably from the pandemic and contracted correspondingly by almost 17 per cent and more than 13 per cent. The impact on employment among male tourism workers was particularly sizeable, falling by around 29 per cent.