ILO warning: Global market worsening; 197 million jobless

http://businessmirror.com.ph/index.php/news/top-news/8788-ilo-warning-global-market-worsening-197-million-jobless

The International Labor Organization (ILO) said the global labor market has worsened, leaving 197 million jobless last year in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and failure of policy-makers to create more decent jobs. 

According to an ILO report on Global Employment Trends issued on Monday, some 39 million people lost their jobs in 2012, opening a 67-million global jobs gap since 2007.

The report blamed the “indecision of policy-makers” in some countries that led to uncertainty about future conditions.

At the same time, it said, private corporations were also at fault for their tendency to “increase cash holdings or pay dividends rather than expand capacity and hire new workers.”

The ILO predicted that global unemployment will further swell to some 210.6 million over the next five years.

Young people constitute a large part of the unemployed, with 73.8 million of them jobless globally. The ILO said that the slowdown in economic activity is likely to push another half million into unemployment by 2014.

“As the crisis spreads through international trade, occupations concentrated in exporting industries are particularly vulnerable and in  several countries their importance in total employment has declined by significant margins,” the ILO report said.

It urged countries to address the steady mismatch of work force and the available jobs citing “new jobs that become available often require competences that the unemployed do not possess.”

The Philippines faces both concerns raised by the ILO, with the country’s  vulnerable export industry and skills- and -industry needs mismatch  among the top reasons for the steady increase in unemployment.

“Governments should step up their efforts to support skill and retraining activities to address the gaps between demand and supply of work skills and qualifications and to address long-term unemployment,” the ILO report said.

It added that companies should engage their work force with reactivation and job counselling measures to improve productivity.

The ILO said that it believes that the global crisis has lowered the pace of structural change in many developing regions, calling for policies to improve productivity and facilitate workers’ mobility across sectors.