Monday 4 March 2013

Global employment trends 2013: recovering from a second jobs dip

a report from the International Labour Organization

Five years after the outbreak of the global financial crisis, the study offers the latest global and regional information and projections on several indicators of the labour market, including employment, unemployment, working poverty and vulnerable employment. It also presents a number of policy considerations in light of the new challenges facing policy makers in the coming year.

Global Employment Trends 2013 highlights how the crisis is increasingly raising trend unemployment rates, partly driven by sectoral shifts of jobs that had been triggered by the crisis. Despite historically low interest rates in many advanced economies, investment and employment have not shown tangible signs of recovery. Depressed growth prospects have started to spread to the developing world, where low productivity and wage growth continues to remain an issue in most regions, preventing improvements in employment and disposable incomes, in particular among poorer countries, and adding to a rise in global inequality.

The report argues that in countries with high and rising unemployment, job guarantee programmes for targeted labour market groups should be the preferred policy measure. Moreover, rising labour market discouragement and structural unemployment should be tackled with new skills and training initiatives to help job-seekers find employment in alternative industries and to promote their employability more broadly. Other possible areas of intervention are further investments in public infrastructure in developing countries and a swift implementation of financial market regulation to help stabilize the macroeconomic environment and stimulate job creation.

Full text (PDF 170pp)


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