The war in Ukraine and other overlapping crises are taking their toll on job markets around the world, the UN said on Monday, suggesting a “severe” slowdown is already underway.

In a new report, the International Labor Organization warns that the outlook for global labor markets has deteriorated in recent months.

“The ILO forecasts that global job growth will deteriorate significantly in the last three months of this year 2022 if current trends continue, and unemployment could start to rise,” the agency’s head, Gilbert Houngbo, told reporters .

The UN agency warned that multiple overlapping crises, exacerbated by Russia’s war in Ukraine, were piling up while the world was still in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Both job creation and job quality fell amid deepening energy and food crises, rising inflation, tightening monetary policies and fears of a looming global recession.

“While it usually takes time for an economic slowdown or recession to lead to job destruction and unemployment, the available data suggests that a severe labor market slowdown is already underway,” the report said.

Earlier this year, as the world began to recover from the peak of the pandemic, employment-to-population ratios in most advanced economies returned to or exceeded pre-Covid levels.

The ILO said this increase was particularly evident in high-skilled jobs – but warned it was also being driven by a rise in informal jobs, which generally lack social protection.

The situation has worsened in recent months, the ILO said, estimating total hours worked in the third quarter were 1.5 percent below pre-pandemic levels.

This corresponds to a deficit of 40 million full-time jobs.

As the number of available jobs shrinks, rising inflation is pushing down real wages in many countries, as many households are still grappling with pandemic-related income declines, it said.

Monday’s report particularly highlighted the dire employment situation in Ukraine itself since Russia invaded in February.

Houngbo said the war has caused “dramatic repercussions on Ukraine’s own labor market.”

Inflation in the conflict-torn country is expected to top 30 percent by the end of the year, while the ILO estimate of employment there would be 15.5 percent below 2021 levels.

That means 2.4 million jobs have been lost since the war began – half the number projected by the ILO in April, when the number of areas in Ukraine occupied or facing active hostilities was higher.

However, the UN agency warned that “a partial labor market recovery is modest and highly fragile”.

It highlighted the large number of internally displaced people looking for work.

“This poses a risk that wages will fall in these areas,” Houngbo said.

The report also estimates that 10.4 percent of Ukraine’s pre-war workers – some 1.6 million people, mostly women – had fled to other countries.

A recent survey found that about a quarter of Ukrainian refugees had found paid work or self-employment in their host countries, the ILO said.

Monday’s report called for in-depth social dialogue to create the measures needed to counteract the downturn in the labor market.

It also warned that excessive policy tightening could cause “undue damage to jobs and incomes in both developed and developing countries”.

It is “to ensure that monetary tightening to fight inflation … is really dovetailed with social measures and minimum social protection,” said Houngbo, describing the global employment situation as “deeply concerning”.

“Avoiding a major global labor market downturn requires comprehensive, integrated and balanced action at both national and global levels.”