Global unemployment set to rise
naky
www.diecastingpartsupplier.com
2016-01-22 17:47:36
The number of jobless people in the world is set to rise this year, as problems in emerging markets prevent the global unemployment rate from returning to pre-crisis levels.
The International Labour Organisation, a UN agency, forecasts that the number of unemployed people in emerging and developing countries will increase by 4.8m in the next two years.
In particular, rising jobless numbers in China, Brazil, Russia and elsewhere will offset improvements in the US and Europe, it says. The ILO’s annual employment report warns will such problems will hold back the expansion of the middle class and risk fuelling social discontent.
The rise in the number of the world’s jobless from 197m in 2015 to 199m this year, would keep 2016’s global jobless rate at 5.8 per cent — the same as the last two years — because of population growth.
The global unemployment rate peaked at 6.2 per cent in 2009 as the financial crisis cost millions of workers their jobs. It has yet to return to its pre-crisis low of 5.5 per cent in 2007.
Unemployment in China will nudge upwards from 4.6 per cent last year to 4.7 per cent this year, according to the forecasts. The agency also expects joblessness to rise in some Arab states.
But other countries appear to be on a steadily improving trend. The unemployment rate in Japan, already among the lowest in the world, is forecast to fall further over the next two years, from 3.3 on average last year to 3.1 per cent in 2017.
In the US the rate is forecast to fall from 5.3 to 4.7 per cent, on a par with pre-crisis levels — although a smaller proportion of the country’s population is now participating in the country’s labour force.
Prospects for workers in Europe, hit hard by the financial crisis and ensuing sovereign debt crisis, also appear to be brightening gradually. Unemployment in the European Union is set to decline from 9.4 to 9.1 per cent by 2017.