Mass graves of suspected Rohingya migrants found in Malaysia

London, Apr 30: The coronavirus is roiling global job markets, but the picture is not all gloomy. Finance, technology and consumer goods firms are hiring tens of thousands in the United States and other countries, according to data from Microsoft Corp's professional networking site LinkedIn.

Across seven countries in North America, Europe and Asia, healthcare providers are among the busiest recruiters given the ongoing battle against the novel coronavirus, which has killed over 200,000 people and infected over 3 million people worldwide, LinkedIn said. But lifestyle changes during lockdown are also driving demand for financial consultants, factory workers, animators and game designers, and delivery workers.

Overall, the hiring rate has plunged in the first quarter from the year-ago period, and in late April remains lower than a year ago across most countries surveyed by the platform. But the data offer a glimmer of hope with a gradual uptick in China, where the coronavirus emerged last year and which leads the world in surfacing from a months-long lockdown.

LinkedIn, with over 690 million users worldwide, counts new hires when people add a new employer to their profile. The rate is the number of new hires divided by the total number of LinkedIn members in a country.

The figures, tracked since mid-February, are not corroborated by official jobs data and do not represent the actual number of jobs in an economy. Government figures are usually released with a time-lag of several weeks.

"We are confident that our data is directionally correct in that there has been a huge decline in hiring in the U.S. and abroad," Guy Berger, principal economist at LinkedIn in California, told Reuters.

Hiring in China plummeted 50% during the height of its coronavirus crisis in mid-February from 12 months earlier. Since restrictions were eased in early April, the hiring rate has inched up, and for the week ending April 24 was 3% lower than the same period in 2019.

Hiring in the United States, United Kingdom, France and Italy - which lead the world in coronavirus-related deaths - remains hugely depressed, but is falling less rapidly than a few weeks ago as the countries pass the peak of their epidemics.

Retailers including Walmart Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Instacart have said they would hire a total of over 700,000 workers to meet a surge in demand for groceries and household essentials during the coronavirus outbreak.

Coronavirus state-wise India update: Total number of confirmed cases, deaths on April 30

Consumer goods manufacturers such as Unilever, whose products include soap and shampoo, confirmed on Wednesday it was hiring to fill 300 jobs globally, but declined to elaborate.

Nestle told Reuters it was looking to fill 5,000 full-time U.S. positions in "a variety of levels across corporate and frontline."

Fidelity Investments, a Boston-based financial services firm, said it had accelerated recruitment because of the pandemic and was looking to fill at least 2,000 full-time roles for financial consultants, software engineers and customer service staff in the United States in 2020.

Companies hiring in the United States and other countries also include Apple Inc; ByteDance, the Chinese parent of video-sharing social network TikTok; Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd; and aerospace and defence company Lockheed Martin Corp. These companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

DIRE WARNINGS

The International Labour Organization warned on Wednesday that 1.6 billion workers, or nearly half of the global workforce, especially in the informal economy, could lose their livelihoods.

Record numbers of people have applied for U.S. jobless benefits since mid-March, and the unemployment rate is expected to soar to 16%, White House economic adviser Kevin Hasset said this week, from a 50-year low of 3.5% before the pandemic hit.

Both Italy and France, in lockdown for nearly two months, have seen hiring rates drop by around 70% from a year ago, according to LinkedIn.

Since China is ahead of other countries on the pandemic timeline, improvements there could suggest the same is in store elsewhere, Berger said. Several American states and European countries have begun allowing some non-essential businesses and schools to reopen in the hopes of restarting the economy and allowing a gradual return to normal life.

"It's still slightly early to call it a firm recovery," Berger said, referring to improving prospects in China. "We're not expecting a full recovery but rather it's an indication that parts of the economy will switch on as lockdowns are eased, at least relative to the worst point of the pandemic."

Washington, Jun 26: The US is reviewing its global deployment of forces to ensure it is postured appropriately to counter the People's Liberation Army, given the increasing threat posed by China to Asian countries like India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday.

Mr Pompeo made those remarks in response to a question during the virtual Brussels Forum 2020 of the German Marshall Fund.

"We're going to make sure we're postured appropriately to counter the PLA. We think that the challenge of our times, and we're going to make sure we have resources in place to do that," Mr Pompeo said.
 
The force posture review is being done at the direction of President Donald Trump, as part of which the US is reducing the number of its troops in Germany from about 52,000 to 25,000, he said.

Mike Pompeo said that the force posture would be dictated by the ground realities.

"In certain places there will be fewer American resources. There'll be other places - I just talked about the threat from the Chinese Communist Party, so now threats to India, threats to Vietnam, threats to Malaysia, Indonesia, South China Sea challenges, the Philippines," he said.

"To the extent that that changed, the difference in what the US decided to do impacts adversely a threat some place, it may be that other nations need to step up and take responsibility for their own defense in ways that they hadn't done previously. So, we want to do this in full consultation with all of our partners all around the world, and certainly our friends in Europe," Mr Pompeo said.

President Trump is being criticised for reducing troops from Germany. His critics say that this will increase the threat from Russia to Europe.

Mike Pompeo, however, did not agree with that argument.

It has been a long time since there has been a strategic review of our force posture all across the world. The US undertook that starting about 2.5 years ago, whether that was our forces in Africa, our forces in Asia, the force we have in the Middle East and in Europe, he said.

"We began to say these are often decisions that were made in a different time. Should we reallocate those a different way? Should we have a different composition of those forces? Everyone always wants to talk about ground troops. I get it. I was a young tank officer. You described that. There's nothing I like as much as a good M1 tank.

"But it's often the case that the capacity to deter Russia or other adversaries isn''t determined any longer by just having a bunch of folks garrisoned someplace. So, we really went to back fundamentally relook, what is the nature of the conflict, what''s the nature of the threat, and how should we allocate our resources, whether that''s our resources in the intelligence community, our resources from the Air Force or the Marines and Army," Mr Pompeo said.

Last week, Mike Pompeo criticised the Chinese Army for "escalating" the border tension with India and militarising the strategic South China Sea. He also described the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) as a "rogue actor".

"Our broad set of allocation of security apparatus, our ability to counter cyber threats, how do we allocate them? What''s the best way to do this? And the decision that you see the president made with respect to Germany is an outcome from a collective set of decisions about how we''re going to posture our resources around the world," said the top American diplomat on Thursday.

Changes in force posture is being taken in consultations with allies and friends, Mr Pompeo said.

"President Trump has spoken to this. (Defense) Secretary (Mark) Esper will be in London today and in Brussels tomorrow. We''ll talk about our plan and how we''re thinking about delivering it," he said.

"But you should understand this, and I hope our European partners will understand this as well. When you see what we ultimately conclude, how we ultimately deliver on the statements of the president made, that they''re aimed squarely at what we believe to be democracies'' fundamental interest and certainly America's most fundamental interest," Mr Pompeo said.

Earlier this month, Mike Pompeo had said that China's actions, be it on the India border, or in Hong Kong or in the South China Sea, were part of the behaviour of the ruling Communist Party in Beijing in the recent past.

China has been fast expanding military and economic influence in the Indo-Pacific region, triggering concern in various countries of the region and beyond.

China is engaged in hotly contested territorial disputes in both the South China Sea and the East China Sea. Beijing has built up and militarised many of the islands and reefs it controls in the region. Both areas are stated to be rich in minerals, oil and other natural resources and are vital to global trade.

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May 15: Global deaths linked to the novel coronavirus passed 300,000 on Thursday, while reported cases of the virus are approaching 4.5 million, according to a news agency tally.

About half of the fatalities have been reported by the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy.

The first death linked to the disease was reported on January 10 in Wuhan, China. It took 91 days for the death toll to pass 100,000 and a further 16 days to reach 200,000, according to the Reuters tally of official reports from governments. It took 19 days to go from 200,000 to 300,000 deaths.

By comparison, an estimated 400,000 people die annually from malaria, one of the world’s most deadly infectious diseases.

The United States had reported more than 85,000 deaths from the new coronavirus, while the United Kingdom and Italy have reported over 30,000 fatalities each.

While the current trajectory of COVID-19 falls far short of the 1918 Spanish flu, which infected an estimated 500 million people, killing at least 10% of patients, public health experts worry the available data is underplaying the true impact of the pandemic.