ILO: Unemployment to increase by 8.1 million in 2013-2014

An International Labour Office (ILO) report published today entitled “Global Employment Trends 2013: Recovering from a second jobs dip”, estimates that unemployment in all 185 member states of the organisation, will rise again this year by 5.1 million and by another 3 million in 2014. The ILO is the international organization responsible for drawing up and overseeing international labour standards, being the only tripartite U.N. agency with government, employer, and worker representatives. According to this report, “In the fifth year after the outbreak of the global financial crisis, global growth has decelerated and unemployment has started to increase again, leaving an accumulated total of some 197 million people without a job in 2012. Moreover, some 39 million people have dropped out of the labour market as job prospects proved unattainable, opening a 67 million global jobs gap since 2007. Despite a moderate pick-up in output growth expected for 2013–14, the unemployment rate is set to increase again”. The findings of the report by region are also revealing. “Lower economic activity and job growth even in countries that had initially escaped the second wave of the crisis constitutes a spillover effect of the weak growth in advanced economies in 2012, in particular recession conditions in Europe. Growth decelerated by 1.4 percentage points in East Asia, largely due to a notable slowdown in China, where growth slowed to 7.8 per cent – the slowest rate of growth since 1999. In South Asia, where growth in India slowed sharply to 4.9 per cent, the lowest rate of growth in the country in a decade, the regional GDP growth rate decelerated by 1.6 percentage points. The regions of Latin America and the Caribbean and the Middle East also saw a substantial deceleration”. In short world economy is still paying its dues to the 2008 financial crisis, entering now in a new recession period without actually having enjoined a full recovery. As usual unemployment hits harder the young. According to the ILO, “young people remain particularly stricken by the crisis. Currently, some 73.8 million young people are unemployed globally and the slowdown in economic activity is likely to push another half million into unemployment by 2014. The youth unemployment rate – which had already increased to 12.6 per cent in 2012 – is expected to increase again to 12.9 per cent by 2017. The crisis has dramatically diminished the labour market prospects for young people, as many experience long-term unemployment right from the start of their labour market entry, a situation that was never observed during earlier cyclical downturns”.