Social

Home page

Social

Global productivity leaps 26%, employment reacts with 16.6% rise

25 January 2007 14:07 (UTC +04:00)

The International Labor Organization reports the number of people unemployed worldwide remained at an historical high in 2006 despite strong global economic growth, the International Labor Office (ILO) said in its annual Global Employment Trends, the APA reports.
For the last decade, economic growth has been reflected more in rising levels of productivity and less in growing employment. While world productivity increased by 26 per cent, the global number of those in employment rose by only 16.6 per cent.
Unemployment hit young people (aged 15 to 24) hardest, with 86.3 million young people representing 44 per cent of the worldâ€™s total unemployed in 2006. The employment gap between women and men persists.
In 2006 only 48.9 per cent of women aged 15 plus were working compared to 49.6 per cent in 1996. The comparable male employment-to-population ratios were 75.7 in 1996 and 74.0 in 2006.
The 2006 unemployment rate worldwide was 6.3 per cent, a decrease of 0.1 per cent against the 2005 figure. Even though more people in the world are working than ever before, the number of jobless people remains at an all time high- some 195.2 million.
The findings of the report conclude that in most regions unemployment rates did not distinctly change between 2005 and 2006.
The report says the Middle East and North Africa remained the region with the highest unemployment rate in the world at 12.2 percent, followed by sub-Saharan Africa at nearly 10 percent. East Asiaâ€™s unemployment rate of 3.6 percent remained the lowest in the world.
The report concludes that 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. /APA/