ILO: Global employment not returns to pre-crisis level

The global employment has not returned to pre-crisis level and the performances are uneven among different countries and regions, said an annual report issued by the International Labor Organization (ILO) on Monday. Most emerging and developing countries have experienced rising employment and advanced economies, particularly in the euro area, see a more problematic employment situation, said the report. The report, named as World of Work Report 2013: Repairing the Economic and Social Fabric, found that the global employment rate in the fourth quarter of 2012 was 55.7 percent, 0.9 percentage points lower than the pre-crisis level in the fourth quarter of 2007, and over 30 million jobs were needed for the employment to return to the level before the crisis. According to the report, the global unemployment was estimated to rise from the current 200 million to almost 208 million by 2015. The employment landscape in emerging and developing economies are more positive than the global picture, with employment rates in 2012 surpassing pre-crisis rates in 13 out of 28 economies with available information, 11 seeing some recovery and only 4 showing continuous decline, showed the report, which noted that in general these economies were less affected in terms of job destruction during the crisis but suffered from the deceleration in employment growth. The employment situation in advanced economies is more problematic, said the report, with only six out of 37 advanced economies with available information having employment rates exceeding pre-crisis levels and nearly half of those analyzed countries and regions witnessing a sustained fall of their employment rates since the kickoff of the crisis. As for the income inequalities, the report said the average Gini coefficient of income inequalities was around 30 in advanced economies (with the exception of the United States, whose level was around 47) and over 40 in the majority of developing and emerging economies. In the report, the coefficients are referred on a scale between 0 and 100. Though remained relatively high, the levels of income inequalities in the developing and emerging economies have continued to decline over the past few years, said the report. The report also showed that middle-income groups in the majority of advanced economies have shrinked over the past two decades fuelled in part by long-term unemployment and weakening job quality, while the size of this group in developing and emerging economies has increased from 263 million in 1999 to 694 million in 2010. The report added that against the backdrop that the global investment was one percentage below pre-crisis levels, the emerging economies accounted for nealy 47 percent of global investment in 2012, compared with only 27 percent in 2000, while advanced economies contributed just over one-third of global investment in 2012, compared to over 60 percent in 2000. "We need a global recovery focussed on jobs and productive investment, combined with better social protection for the poorest and most vulnerable groups. And we need to pay serious attention to closing the inequality gap that is widening in so many parts of the world," Guy Ryder, ILO Director-General said in a written statement. The report recommended approaches that balance macroeconomic and employment goals, a sustainable pace of fiscal consolidation measures where they are necessary, more attention to the employment and social impact of different macroeconomic policies, and also called for re-focusing on the real economy and taking measures to reduce economy uncertainty and encourage investment.