GENEVA: Unemployment looks set to grow around the globe well into the present decade, sparking increasing public protest especially in Europe and the Middle East, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said on Monday.
In its annual World of Work Report, the United Nations agency said the global economy was on the verge of a new and deeper jobs recession and warned that austerity policies adopted by many countries would only make the situation worse.
"The next few months will be crucial for avoiding a dramatic downturn in employment and a further significant aggravation of social unrest," said main author Raymond Torres in an editorial comment in the report.
Torres, a top ILO analyst, argued that pursuing tight fiscal policies that not only restricted job growth but actually undermined present employment levels could only deepen economic woes and dampen prospects for recovery.
The report said global unemployment had reached the highest level ever recorded at over 200 million -- or some 6.2 percent of a total potential workforce of some 3.23 billion. In countries like Spain and Greece it was over 40 per cent.
With the international economy stalling again after signs of a recovery in 2010 from the financial and banking crisis of 2008-09, Torres told a news conference, jobless totals were unlikely to diminish any time soon.
80 MILLION JOBS NEEDED
To return to the pre-crisis situation of 2007, at least 80 million jobs needed to be created -- many of them in developed countries -- over the next two years, said Torres, director of the ILO's International Institute for Labour Studies.
But current growth trends, particularly in developed economies, suggested that only half this figure, calculated to take into account young people entering the job market for the first time, could be achieved at best.
This suggested that it would take at least five years -- to 2016 or 2017 -- to get back to the employment levels of 2007, the report said.
"We have reached the moment of truth. We have a brief window of opportunity to avoid a major double-dip in unemployment," said Torres in a comment aimed at G20 leaders meeting in Cannes on November 3-4 to discuss the world's economic woes.
The UN agency said a special study carried out for the report showed popular discontent was spreading, with the risk of social unrest higher than last year in one-third of the 119 countries where surveys could be performed.
Workers, especially young people, were losing faith in governments and growing increasingly angry over what they saw as policies favouring the rich.
Torres told his Geneva news conference he hoped G20 governments could adjust policies to "make markets work for jobs" and ensure that loans were available for small and medium-sized businesses to develop their activities.
"Recent trends reflect the fact that not enough attention has been paid to jobs as a key driver of recovery. Countries have increasingly focused on appeasing financial markets," he said in the introduction to the report.
In advanced economies, there had been focus on fiscal austerity and how to help the banks without reforming them or providing a vision of how the economy would recover, he said.
"In some cases, this has been accompanied by measures that have been perceived as a threat to social protection and workers' rights. This will not boost jobs and growth," the ILO analyst said.
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