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- The pandemic is already confronting some of the world’s poorest nations with their greatest economic challenge in decades. Income losses in the developing world are expected to exceed $220 billion, the United Nations warned on Monday. Nearly half of all jobs in Africa could be lost.
Wealthy European governments are paying furloughed workers the majority of their salaries, and millions of Americans who lose their jobs will have access to unemployment benefits. But billions of people in Africa, South Asia and parts of Latin America and the Caribbean work in the informal economy, living life on the margins with little to no social safety net.
They are street vendors, house cleaners, motorcycle-taxi drivers. They live off what they earn for the day. They frequently lack property, or savings. Running water. Refrigerators. They’re being told to distance themselves socially while they sleep in rooms crammed in some cases with a dozen or more people.