Economies are slowly recovering from the financial crisis of 2008 and the weak economic growth has a strong impact on the global employment situation. Despite the governmental support and employment initiatives launched in many countries, almost 202 million people around the world were unemployed in 2013. An increase of 5 million was registered in 2013, compared to 2012. If the current trends continue, global unemployment is expected to worsen further.
The grim statistics were revealed by the Global Employment Trends 2014 report, prepared by the International Labour Organization. It is the specialized United Nations agency dedicated to improving the international labour conditions, legislation and living standards. Its 2014 report on global employment tracks and analyses various issues in the labour market, revealing quite alarming trends. According to the numbers, global unemployment increased by 5 million people in 2013, compared to the previous year, reaching 202 million people. This is a reflection of the slow growth of the market, which can’t keep up with the growing labour force. The largest increase is seen in South and East Asia, a region which is a home to more than 45 percent of this year’s additional jobseekers. It is followed by Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe, while Latin America added only 50,000 jobless people (or 1%) to the total number.
Another finding, which continues for several years now, is that young people are particularly affected by the weak and uneven recovery. In 2013, the number of young jobseekers (aged 15-24) around the world increased by almost a million, reaching 74.5 million people, while the 13.1 unemployment rate is now three times as high as the adult unemployment rate. In fact, this is the largest gap in youth and adult unemployment, with the highest ratio reported in the Middle East and North Africa region. Latin America, the Caribbean and Southern Europe also have large differences in the statistics for the young people and the adults. The report also points out that the number of young people who are neither in employment, nor in education or training (NEET) is also increasing. In some countries, nearly a quarter of the people aged 15 to 29 are now NEET.
Across all regions, the highest unemployment rates are observed in North Africa (12.2%) and the Middle East (10.9%). Some Middle Eastern countries also have a large number of workers who are self-employed or employed on a casual basis without a contract and access to social security. This informal employment is particularly widespread in Africa, some Asian regions, Latina America and the Caribbean. The Middle East, Central and South-Eastern Europe (non-EU) and the members of the Commonwealth of Independent States see shares in the informal employment between 15 and 30 percent.
The recent social unrest in the MENA region, notably in the Syrian Arab Republic and Libya greatly affected the economic growth and the employment market. This is most evident in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Tunisia. Other factors which affect the job market here are the decelerated growth, the slowdown in main commodity prices, and the regional economy which is still not very well integrated. Most economies in the MENA region also suffer from a specialization in sectors, generating low employment growth, as well as lack of structural transformation towards high-productive industries. The report also says that the GCC countries, which offer generous public employment offers to nationals (as in the UAE), push up wage premiums for the natives and can’t develop sustainable business sectors outside their few highly productive ones.
The highest youth unemployment in the world is also in the MENA region – up to 27.2% in the Middle East and nearly 30% in North Africa. In many countries education attainment in fact increases the risk of being unemployed – in Saudi Arabia, the unemployment rates for people with tertiary education are more than 43%, 24% in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and 22% in the United Arab Emirates. It turns out that in these countries, many of the young people are either unqualified or overqualified.
If the current trends remain the same, global unemployment will increase further and by 2018, there will be more than 215 million jobseekers around the world. The number of workers in extreme poverty is declining, but at a very low rate (2.7 % globally) – in 2013, 375 million workers live on less than $1.25 per day. At the same time, informal unemployment remains widespread in many developing countries and in Eastern Europe and across CIS countries, it accounts for more than 20% of the total employment.
