Global labor market debates in the ILO publications in the COVID-19 era

The COVID-19 pandemic, which began in 2020, significantly changed the dynamics of working life. To help capture these changing dynamics, we examined publications that the International Labour Organization published during this period. This article aims to determine what kind of discussions are made within the framework of these publications in the context of COVID-19 by period and region. Thus, we researched the most intense discussion themes and tried to discover the global agendas of the labor markets. Within the scope of this article, we downloaded, classified, and examined a total of 1,062 publications (reports, webinars, and bulletins) published between January 2020 and April 2021. As a result of the analysis, we saw that the themes of working hours, informal workers, vulnerable workers, decent work, social protection, remote working, skills development, social dialogue, and labor standards were dominant. Discussions of remote work and the digitalization of the workspace have gained momentum since the early 2000s.