Lying at the heart of broader societal health, job growth is the glue that holds together economic growth, social cohesion and poverty reduction.
But faced with persistently gloomy outlook for growth and global jobs prospects, there is dire need for countries to act out in time to devise cohesive labour market policies that tackle core issues of labour force participation and labour force segregation along gender lines.
IMFs recently launched report on jobs and growth reveals that global unemployment has been hit hard by the macroeconomic woes in last five years, plaguing the most advanced economies of the world.
Tapering off in 2011, the increasingly difficult economic landscape marred by an ailing Eurozone saw the global growth decelerate once again in its fifth year, taking down improved job prospects with it.
Against increased labour market challenges, the backlog of unemployment thus increased by a further four million during the course of 2012 according to ILO.
Despite the strengthening dollar and small recovery signs in the US jobs and growth data, progress is slow as investments have not yet returned to pre-crisis levels in many countries. Hence the issue of chalking out the right mix of development policies to attain "inclusive growth" remains central to the IMF reports findings.
Caught in a negative feedback loop, high unemployment and low wage growth centred in similar developed economies have been taking down demand for goods and services- subsequently dampening business prospects; leaving firms in a hiring and investment freeze.
Thus the report points out the need to focus policy measures on tackling the receding aggregate demand in a bid to patch up the output gap within the group of advanced economies. Moreover overcoming the labour market "mismatches" will remain another key issue within these economies.
Faced with entirely different challenges, job markets in developing countries on the other hand need to pick up their game in a different manner.
Issues of core relevance to these economies remain structural transformation wherein- resources need to be reallocated from traditionally protected sectors to more productive sectors and industries - a factor that will be a key driver of growth in low-income nations such as our own.
In this regard, a report prepared by the Commission of Growth and Development also find that the more resource rich of the developing nations group would do well to avoid the "resource curse" wherein an over dependence on a readily available source of foreign income can lead to poor diversification.
Additionally, there is a need to stress on providing the fundamentals for job creation within most developing economies. In this regard, increased efforts by the governments to chalk out policies that foster private sector job creation and promote youth employment can go a long way to strengthen demographic dividends.
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Annual employment growth rates
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2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012*
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World 1.7 1.1 0.4 1.4 1.5 1.3
Developed Economies(and EU) 1.5 0.6 -2.2 -0.2 0.4 0.3
East Asia 1.2 0 0.6 1 0.6 0.5
South Asia 0.9 0.7 0.5 1 2.1 2
Middle East 3.8 1.7 3.4 3.2 3.4 3
North Africa 3.7 3 2.2 2.5 1.1 2
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Source: ILO, Trends Econometrics Models, 2012
*2012 are preliminary estimates