Record number of jobless youth says the ILO

Another sign of how few available jobs are out there comes from a report from the International Labor Organization. The ILO says that the jobless rate for youth is at an all time high. 81 million people young people were without jobs in 2008. The ILO defines the young as those between the ages of 15 and 21. Of course, the ILO blames the global recession for the record high.

From the Australian Broadcasting Company, we read more about the ILO report from writer Karon Snowdon.

The global unemployment rate for youth is 13 per cent, eight million higher than at any other time and still rising.

Forty-five per cent of the increase has occurred in Europe, which is more dependent on the officially classified "formal" sector.

In developing countries, with little or no social security safety net, people have no choice but to work at any job they can find. Some can return to family farming to get by.

But the crisis in developing countries like Cambodia, Nepal and parts of India is expressed in already bad work conditions and wages getting worse and deepening extreme poverty.

ILO economist Kee Beom Kim says more than 150 million young people work but never break out of the poverty trap.

Asia still spending on children during the recession

In comparing the current recession to the Asian economic crisis of 1997, the International Labor Organization found some good news. Child labor has not increased significantly during this current slowdown, whereas child labor had a huge jump in 1997. The ILO attributes this to Asian governments continued spending on social assistance instead of cutting those programs.

From the IPS, reporter Marwaan Macan-Markar examines how the Asian countries are coping in the world's recession in regards to child labor.

"There are some positive signs emerging from the current crisis unlike in 1997," says Gyorgy Sziraczki, senior economist at the Asia-Pacific office of the International Labour Organization (ILO). "Governments have learnt from the Asian crisis and are not repeating the same mistakes as they did then."

"Cutting social spending after the 1997 crisis was an aggravating factor to increasing child labour," added Szirackzi in an interview in his Bangkok office. "This explains the good news this time."

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) learned similar lessons. The two financial institutions’ austerity conditions for large bailout or rescue packages included cutting social spending. This time, though, "they didn’t suggest cuts in social spending," said Szirackzi.

"The governments in the region did not cut social spending but introduced programmes that strengthened social spending," Szirackzi explained. Indonesia and the Philippines are among the countries where innovative social spending programmes have been introduced, consequently keeping vulnerable children in the school system.

Indonesia’s ‘Hopeful Family Programme’, which was implemented in January 2007, was expanded in 2009 to cover more families in the giant archipelago following the crisis hitting its export sector. Under this programme, families living below the poverty line of less than 15 U.S. dollars per month get a direct boost of cash on top of aid for health and education.

These forms of assistance are conditional on expectant mothers undergoing at least four medical check-ups during maternity, said the ILO in a study assessing the impact of the global financial crisis in Asia. "Families with children need to take them to local community health centres to receive vaccinations and ensure they complete up to junior high school. A minimum attendance requirement is also set at 85 percent each year," added the report.

A similar programme in the Philippines—called ‘Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino’ or poverty reduction programme for the Filipino familiy, which was implemented in 2007—was expanded in 2009 to benefit more poor families, says Armin Bauer, a senior economist at the Manila-based Asian Development Bank. "They were given conditional cash transfers to ensure that maternal care was ensured and that children went to school."

The Philippines and Indonesia gave additional money to the already prevailing social spending programmes, he said in a telephone interview from the Philippine capital, Manila. "After the 1997 crash there was no additional money spent, only cuts."

Strong global growth fails to reduce jobless

from The Mail and Guardian

Strong global economic growth is failing to reduce unemployment worldwide and has done little to cut the number of "working poor" who earn less than $2 a day, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said on Thursday.

Even though more people were employed than ever before, the number of new jobs created failed to match the rise in global population.

The result was that the number of jobless remained at a record high of 195,2-million in 2006, the ILO said in its annual report on employment trends.

About 1,37-billion people were still working for $2 a day or less, which marks the international poverty line.

"The strong economic growth of the last half decade has only had a slight impact on the reduction of the number of workers who live with their families in poverty," said ILO director general Juan Somavia.

"Even with continued strong global economic growth in 2007, there is serious concern about the prospects for decent job creation and reducing working poverty," he added.

For the first time, service industries became the world's largest employers accounting for 40% of the global workforce, overtaking agriculture which slipped to 38,7%.

In its report, Global Employment Trends Brief 2007, the ILO said that over the past decade rising economic output was more a reflection of greater productivity than increased employment.

While understanding the need to fight inflation, the ILO has long called for governments to give higher priority to promoting growth and creating jobs.

The Middle East and North Africa remained the region where unemployment was highest at 12,2%, ahead of sub-Saharan Africa with 9,8%.

But up to 10% of workers in sub-Saharan Africa, the highest percentage of any region, take home less than $2 a day. Over the past five years, the number of working poor in the region has risen by 26-million. - Reuters