UN’s ILO cautions of a severe shortage of care workers.

Who is a care worker?

• According to International Labour Organization (ILO), there are unpaid and paid care works.
• Two kinds of work fall in the unpaid category, and these overlap suitably.
• There are the direct, personal and relational care activities.
• E.g. mother feeding a baby or a son nursing his ill parents.
• Indirect care activities include cooking and cleaning and other household chores.
• On the other hand, paid care work involves healthcare or other professionals.
• It includes nurses, teachers, doctors and personal care workers.
• They take care of patients, aged people and people with similar challenges and vulnerabilities.

What is ILO's observation?

• There is a shortfall in paid care - the nurses, teachers, doctors and personal care workers.
• Already, there are over 380 million such workers.
• They account for 11.5% of total global jobs.
• But this is not enough given the pace of population growth, ageing and diseases.

What are the driving factors?

• In 2015, ILO estimates showed that around 2 billion people were in need of care.
• This comprised of 1.9 billion under age 15 and 0.2 billion senior citizens.
• This number is estimated to go up, touching 2.3 billion by 2030.
• This is a significant increase considering the way healthcare improves.
• Besides, changes in social dynamics and the concept of family are also the reasons.
• Growth in nuclear families and fragmentation would increase people in need of care.
• Notably, nuclear families account for the highest share of the world’s working-age population.

What are the shortfalls and possible measures?

• Policies - Governments and businesses must formulate policies to provide decent care work.
• ILO estimates that this will need doubling the investment in the care economy.
• It could lead to a total of 475 million jobs by 2030, which means 269 million new jobs.
• Pay - In countries such as India, care workers like nurses are alarmingly underpaid.
• Nurses and midwives constitute the biggest occupational group in healthcare.
• Nursing remains the most feminised of the healthcare occupations, according to the ILO.
• Low, poor wages force them to try multiple jobs, more shifts or working overtime.
• Such practices not only endanger the quality of care work but also impact work-life balance.
• Any policy in this regard should promote social justice and gender equality.
• Unpaid work - The ILO and several rights agencies now consider unpaid care as proper work.
• An ILO survey shows each day unpaid care work constitutes 16.4 billion hours.
• In other words, two billion people working eight hours per day with no remuneration.
• If this is assigned a price, it would be $11 trillion i.e. 9% of global GDP.
• Notably, nearly 80% of this is household work, mostly done by women.
• There is a need for more childcare and elder-care services so that more women are free to pursue careers.