Five years after the global financial crisis hit,unemployment numbers continue to soar, with a record 202 million peopleworldwide expected to be officially jobless this year, the International LabourOrganization said Tuesday.
Last year saw a clear resurgence of the crisis, the UN’slabour body said in its annual report on global employment trends, pointing outthat jobless numbers rose by four million to 197 million in 2012.
“This figure means that today there are 28 million moreunemployed people around the world than they were in 2007,” before the crisis,ILO chief Guy Ryder told reporters in Geneva Monday.
Last year’s unemployment number inched up towards theall-time record of 199 million reached at the epicentre of the crisis in 2009,but “we will beat that record in 2013”, an ILO expert told AFP.
In fact, another 5.1 million people are expected to join thejobless ranks this year, bringing the total number to more than 202 million.
That number is expected to rise by another three million in2014 and should hit 210.6 million by 2017, ILO said, adding that the globalunemployment rate was expected to stay steady at 6.0 percent until then.
“The trends are very much (going) in the wrong direction,”Ryder said, lamenting a “noticeable worsening of the unemployment situationaround the world”.
The impact of the economic crises on the global labourmarket had in many cases been worsened by incoherence between monetary andfiscal policies and “a piecemeal approach” to the problems, especially in theeurozone, the report said.
“Weakened by faltering aggregate demand, the labour markethas been further hit by fiscal austerity programmes in a number of countries,which often involved direct cutbacks in employment and wages,” it said.
At the same time, “labour force participation has fallendramatically ... masking the true extent of the jobs crisis,” ILO said,pointing out that 39 million people dropped out of the labour market altogetherlast year as job prospects became increasingly gloomy.
Young people have been especially hard-hit by the expandingjobless trend, the UN agency said, pointing out that there are currently some73.8 million youths, aged 15 to 24, without work worldwide.
“And the slowdown in economic activity is likely to push anotherhalf million into unemployment by 2014,” the report cautioned.
Last year, the global youth unemployment rate stood at 12.6percent, and it was expected to rise to 12.9 percent by 2017, according to ILO.
“The crisis has dramatically diminished the labour marketprospects for young people, as many experience long-term unemployment rightfrom the start of their labour market entry,” the UN agency said, adding thatit had never seen anything similar during previous downturns.
Today, around 35 percent of all young people on the dole inadvanced economies have been out of work for six months or longer, up from just28.5 percent in 2007, the report showed.
