World Employment and Social Outlook Trends 2019: Key Facts

The International Labour Organisation has released the annual World Employment and Social Outlook Trends for the year 2019. The important features of the report are:

• Unemployment rates were anticipated to fall to 4.9% in 2019 and are expected to hold steady into 2020.
• The number of jobless in real terms is estimated to rise from 172 million to 174 million in that time as the labour market expands.
• The unemployment rate increased from 5 to 5.6% between 2008-9, as the fallout of the near total collapse of major markets took hold.
• The report lamented the fact that it had taken nine years to recover from the shock of the 2007/8 global financial crisis.
• The report presents concerns about the female workforce participation rate. The much lower labour force participation of women at 48%, compared with 75% for men means that around three in five of the 3.5 billion people in the global labour force were men.
• After a period of rapid improvement that lasted until 2003, subsequent progress on closing the gender gap in participation rates had stalled.
• 2 billion of the 3.3 billion people in the global labour market worked in informal employment which put their economic security at risk.
• The poor quality of many jobs also resulted in the fact that in 2018 more than one-quarter of workers in low and middle-income countries were living in extreme or moderate poverty.
• The global unemployment among young people (between 15-24) stood at 11.8 per cent, higher than other age brackets.
• The report notes that in line with a stable aggregate unemployment rate, the outlook for men, women and young people with regard to opportunities on the job market is also very stable and further adds that neither the gender disparities nor the labour market challenges faced by young people are expected to abate in the coming year.
• Youth participation in the labour market had been declining steadily for the last 25 years and one of the main causative factors for this was more young people were entering further education.

The report also notes that around 114 million children aged between 5-14 involved in the global labour market and 73 million of them were working in hazardous conditions, according to data from 2016.

Month: Current Affairs - February, 2019