Millions of jobs lost; ILO takes urgent intervention

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – SIGNS of economic relief have been obscured by the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) recent labour market projections for 2009 which show further increase in  unemployment, working poor and those in vulnerable employment. 

In his June 2 presentation of the new projections, ILO Director-General Juan Somavia cautioned that this year would see the “worst global performance on record” in terms of employment creation, and gave minimal hope for an immediate economic rebound.

According to the report, the global labour force is expanding at an average rate of 1.6 percent annually, introducing about 45 million new entrants, while global employment growth saw a marked decrease to 1.4 percent in 2008 and is expected to drop further to between zero and one percent in 2009. Such a disparity, according to the report, may only be corrected if around 300 million new jobs are created over the next five years to absorb the continued growth in the labour force. 

To address the disproportionate growth of the world’s labour force, Somavia informed that the ILO’s International Labour Conference would consider, as a matter of urgency, a global jobs pact. The new initiative, according to Somavia, would promote a coordinated policy response to the global jobs crisis.

“Unless additional swift and bold action is taken, employment will remain depressed well after stock markets recover, the world economy resumes positive growth, and media attention shifts to other issues,” Somavia said. “A global jobs pact would stimulate the real economy and sustain working families through employment-oriented measures. It would reduce the time to recovery. It would activate the recovery of employment as quickly as possible together with the resumption of economic growth”, he added.

The Director-General stated that the global jobs pact would be aimed at placing employment creation and social protection “at the centre of recovery policies”. He explained that the primary aim of the pact is to ensure that stimulus measures, together with other government policies, better address the needs of people who need protection and work in order to accelerate combined economic and employment recovery.

As at May 2009, the ILO revised its unemployment projections from 210 million to 239 million unemployed worldwide in 2009, corresponding to global unemployment rates of 6.5 and 7.4 percent respectively. The report also revealed that the number of unemployed youth is expected to increase by between 11 and 17 million from 2008 to 2009.

Closer to home, the ILO projected that the unemployment rate for Latin America would increase from 7.1 percent in 2007 to between 8.4 and 9.2 percent in 2009. 

According to Somavia, the job crisis may persist as the trend shows an increase of between 39 and 59 million in the number of unemployed people, while updated projections of working poverty across the world indicate that 200 million workers are at risk of joining the ranks of people living on less than US$2 per day between 2007 and 2009.