ILO:::Global unemployment on rise despite economic recovery

International Labour Organisation warns of 'jobless recovery' with unemployment on the increase even though economic conditions are improving

Global unemployment climbed by five million people in 2013 to 202 million despite green shoots in the world economy, signalling a jobless recovery, the International Labour Organisation says.

Business activity is picking up but the misery of unemployment continues to pile up.

"We continue to be on an upward trajectory in terms of unemployment in the world," Guy Ryder, the UN labour agency's director general, told reporters on Monday.

"What is perhaps equally concerning is that, on current trends, and notwithstanding the modest recovery in growth that we are seeing, unemployment will continue to increase in coming years," Ryder said as he released the ILO's annual employment report.

By 2018, about 215 million people worldwide are expected to be unemployed, according to the ILO.

"At current rates of growth, we're simply not able to produce any improvement in these figures. Indeed, they're going to get worse," Ryder said.

"We believe that employment needs to be put at the centre of international policymaking."

"There is a clear linkage between these unacceptable levels of unemployment in the world, and growing inequality," he added, noting that inequality functions as a "brake on growth".

A global labour market recovery is being held back by a shortfall in demand, the ILO said, noting that in many developed economies, cuts in public spending and increases in income and consumption taxes were weighing heavily on businesses and households.

In addition, the financial sector remains troubled, credit is stills hard to obtain for small businesses in many economies, and wage rises have lagged behind increases in productivity.

North Africa remained the hardest-hit region of the globe in 2013, with an unemployment rate of 12.2 per cent, followed by the Middle East on 10.9 per cent.

Europe, North America and other developed economies followed on 8.6 per cent, ahead of ex-Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union's 8.2 per cent, and Sub-Saharan Africa's 7.6 per cent.

The rate in Latin America and the Caribbean was 6.5 per cent.

In East Asia - a label covering China - the level was 4.5 per cent, while the rates in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and South Asia, were 4.2 per cent and 4.0 per cent respectively.

Youth unemployment - which the ILO counts as covering potential workers aged between 15 and 24 years - remained a major concern.

It stood at 13 per cent last year, far outstripping the 6.0 per cent average global rate of joblessness.

AFP source:::http://www.businessspectator.com.au

Global youth unemployment and unemployment rate, 1991-2013