World News :- The
International Labour Organization has released a
pessimistic report of the global jobs market in 2012 saying urgent
attention is needed to create 600 million new jobs in the next 10 years.
"Despite
strenuous government efforts, the jobs crisis continues unabated, with
one in three workers worldwide, or an estimated 1.1 billion people,
either unemployed or living in poverty," said ILO director-general, Juan
Somavia, in the Global Employment Trends 2012 report.
"What is needed is that job creation in the real economy must become our number one priority," he said.
"Whether we recover or not from this crisis will depend on how effective government policies ultimately are."
The
report said governments must coordinate and act decisively "to reduce
the fear and uncertainty that is hindering private investment so that
the private sector can restart the main engine of global job creation."
ILO
senior economist Ekkehard Ernst said at a press conference the recovery
started in 2009 was short-lived and there were nearly 29 million fewer
people in the labour force now than "would be expected based on
pre-crisis trends".
"Our forecast has become much more
pessimistic than last year, with the possibility of a serious
deceleration of the growth rate," he said.
The report refers to
"discouraged workers", those who have decided to stop looking for work
because they feel they have no chance of finding a job and are
considered economically inactive.
"If these discouraged workers
were counted as unemployed, then global unemployment would swell from
the current 197 million to 225 million, and the unemployment rate would
rise from six percent to 6.9 percent," Ernst said.
Young people continued to be the hardest hit by the jobs crisis.
"Judging
by the present course," the report says, "there is little hope for a
substantial improvement in their near-term employment prospects."
The
ILO says 74.8 million youths aged 15-24 were unemployed in 2011, an
increase of more than four million since 2007 in the total global labour
force of 3.3 billion.
Globally young people are nearly three
times as likely as adults to be unemployed. The global youth
unemployment rate, at 12.7 percent, remains a full percentage point
above the pre-crisis level.
Ernst and fellow ILO economist Moazam
Mahmood recommended additional public spending "to support both the
domestic and global economies."
The report warned that outside
Asia, developing regions have lagged behind developed economies in
labour productivity growth, raising the risk of a further divergence in
living standards along with limiting prospects for poverty reduction.
