Global Agenda Council on Employment 2013
Issue Overview |
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Since the financial and economic crisis began, the global economy has witnessed rising unemployment; several advanced economies have been particularly badly affected. Unemployment in OECD countries has risen from 5.7% to 8.6%; it has almost doubled in the United States. Despite recent improvements, unemployment has risen well above 20% in Spain and Greece, where it has been particularly severe among young people – one out of two remains unemployed – and the long-term unemployed, whose numbers have been steadily rising. In Asian developing countries, however, unemployment rates are starting to drop to pre-crisis levels.
Addressing this challenge will require several measures, both in the short and medium to long term, including policy solutions designed to tackle skills shortages, improve the efficiency of labour markets and create gainful employment. Bridging the gap between education and training systems, as well as in-company and lifelong-learning programmes, and labour markets to ensure greater coherence between supply and demand will be imperative. Today, many industries suffer skill shortages, while others have vacancies they are unable to fill. This hampers productivity and competitiveness and fails to address the unemployment challenge. In Europe, despite high rates of unemployment, currently 4 million vacancies exist. Similarly, in the United States, there are 3.7 million vacancies, but unemployment remains stubbornly high. Even in booming China, where it is difficult to fill vacancies in certain sectors, segments of the population are struggling to join the labour market.
Finally, job quality has also become a huge concern. Significant numbers of people work in the informal sector where they lack decent working conditions.
- About 27 million jobs have been lost directly as a result of the recession.
- Low-skilled adults are the most vulnerable to rising unemployment: in the European Union, unemployment among this demographic has increased by 5 percentage points between 2008 and 2012.
- Although measuring employment in the informal economy is a challenge, it represents a very significant part of employment in many parts of the world: the percentage of individuals employed in the informal sector is estimated to be 59.2 in Uganda (2010), 58.3 in Honduras (2009) and 43.5 in Vietnam (2009).
“Employment can no longer be treated as a residual outcome of economic growth. Rather, employment growth is now necessary to bring about economic recovery.”
Kemal Dervis, John Evans; Dervis is Vice-President and Director, Global Economy and Development, Brookings Institution, USA. Global Agenda Council on Employment and Social Protection report, 2012
“There has to be an overall strategy now for prioritizing job creation as the key problem which has to be resolved in this economic crisis.”
John Evans, General Secretary, Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD, Paris World Economic Forum, 4 June 2012
“I believe we are facing a global social time bomb, or more accurately, a series of such time bombs, each one different according to the particular circumstances in various parts of the world. This situation we face is derived from a global shortage of jobs and widening social inequalities. Something like 61 million people have as much income as the bottom 3.5 billion of the world’s population.”
Stephen Pursey, Director, Policy Integration Department and Senior Adviser to the Director-General, International Labour Organization (ILO), Geneva, Switzerland. Forumblog.org, 22 March 2012
Jobs for Growth and Growth for Jobs Global Agenda Council on Employment
International Labour Organization
Global Agenda Council on Employment and Social Protection
Skill mismatch: the role of the enterprise
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Workshop on government approaches to supporting local economic and employment development
11 October 2012
Riga, Latvia
102nd Session of the International Labour Conference
5-21 June 2013
Geneva, Switzerland
9th Annual Meeting. OECD LEED Forum on Partnerships and Local Governance
26-27 March 2013
Dublin, Ireland
The Global Agenda Council on Employment seeks to developing tailor-made policies and public-private collaborations to address employment challenges facing several economies. These can result in a severe deskilling of the labour force, especially among particularly affected groups including youth, the long-term unemployed or women. In addition, and in the medium term, the Council will also strive to contribute to a better understanding and monitoring of the skill mismatch in the labour market, including the underutilization, absence and displacement of skills. Moreover, the work of the Council will focus on defining potential programmes and actions that can help address this challenge in different geographical contexts, especially with regard to the involvement of the private sector in monitoring and forecasting current and future skill needs, planning and delivering training programmes for skills development, and developing skills competencies and standards.
The work of the Council will build on the recommendations that the Global Agenda Council on Employment & Social Protection delivered last year for business and governments to implement immediate and existing measures to boost job creation and retention, such as introducing youth employment pacts or flexible job retention policies similar to the short-time working scheme in Germany.
Research Analyst: Marc Caverzasio, Global Agenda Councils, marc.caverzasio@weforum.org
Council Manager: Beñat Bilbao, Associate Director and Senior Economist, Global Benchmarking Network, benat.bilbao@weforum.org
Forum Lead: Jennifer Blanke, Lead Economist, Senior Director, Head of the Global Competitive Network, jennifer.blanke@weforum.org
