Labor & Employment Law

ILO: Global Unemployment Still A Crisis

By James Parks

As the world?s top business and government leaders gather in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual economic forum, the International Labor Organization (ILO) today released a new report showing that despite some improvements in the global economy, unemployment remains at crisis levels. Some 205 million people worldwide are officially unemployed. That doesn’t count the millions more who have given up looking for work or who are working part-time when they want to work full-time.  

The ILO?s “Global Employment Trends” report shows the worldwide jobless rate barely moved from 6.3 percent in 2009 to 6.2 percent last year.  The rate was 5.6 percent before the global recession began three years ago.

?The tremendous human costs of the recession are still with us,? says ILO Director-General Juan Somavia:

There is one common challenge: we need to rethink our standard macroeconomic policy mixes and make quality job creation and decent work a central target of macroeconomic policies, alongside high growth, low inflation and balanced public budgets. We must not forget that for people the quality of work defines the quality of a society.

Read the ILO report here.

Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), says:

The job market is by far the most important part of the economy and the ILO?s report underlines the severity of world unemployment. The fact that more than 205 million workers remain unemployed is of major concern, and tackling this crisis must be the primary focus of economic policy.

The ILO report concludes that ?it is crucial to maintain or enhance measures that can help boost employment generation and jump-start a sustainable jobs recovery.

However, Burrow disputed the ILO?s assertion that policies are needed in developed countries to boost productivity in order to reduce labor costs and enhance competitiveness. She says:

Higher wages and more consumer demand should be the basis for sustainable growth. The way to address global trade imbalances is through a larger expansion of purchasing power in developing countries, not for developed countries to enter a competitive race to the bottom.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on January 25, 2011 (boomark / email).