NEW YORK – Over the past decade, the ranks of the unemployed have swollen to close to 190 million worldwide. That number captures only a fraction of the problem, since 80% of the global workforce is in the informal sector, without any unemployment benefits or other social protection. It is estimated that at least 43.5% of workers – 1.3 billion people – do not earn enough to lift themselves and their families above the $2-a-day poverty line. Recent World Bank poverty recalculations are expected to raise the number even higher.
Evidently, the global economy’s growth in recent decades – including the last half-decade when many developing countries did quite well – has not created enough good jobs. Nor have current economic and social policies compensated much for this shortfall.
Beyond the rising number of unemployed and underemployed, conditions for many of the employed have been deteriorating as well in most countries, especially for workers with little education and few skills.
Globally, casual labor, outsourcing, and job contracting and subcontracting are becoming the norm, weakening entitlements for workers and creating more job insecurity.
According to a recent report by the United Nations, The Employment Imperative: Report on the World Social Situation , national policies aimed at counteracting these trends and lowering unemployment have largely failed. The report shows that in their desire to remain or become more competitive, governments and employers around the world have taken many steps to increase labor market flexibility. But this has merely contributed to greater economic insecurity and greater inequality, while failing to achieve either full or productive employment, as promised.
Perhaps even more compelling, services’ share of total global employment reached 42.7% in 2007, well ahead of agriculture (34.9%) and industry (22.4%). Many service-sector jobs are low-paying, precarious, and not covered by formal mechanisms of social protection.
Meanwhile, many more of the unemployed now have to demonstrate that they are “deserving” of unemployment assistance, which is increasingly given on a discretionary basis, contingent on fulfillment of specified behavioral obligations. In other words, entitlement to unemployment benefits is ceasing to be a social right.
While recognizing the challenges in designing policies to address such problems, there is an urgent need to move beyond rhetoric. Collective efforts by the international community, national governments, and civil society, including the private sector, are required to meet the employment challenge in the twenty-first century.
At the international level, cooperation and coordination among countries are needed to counteract the pressures of the current “race to the bottom” in the global competition for investment and markets. At the national level, reform of social protection systems in developed countries, and the expansion of such systems in developing countries, should seek to ensure greater economic security as well as labor flexibility.
Governments have been promoting individual savings accounts for pensions, health, and unemployment insurance; often, these are either mandatory or subsidized through tax incentives. As individual savings accounts figure increasingly in social protection systems, governments need to provide adequate economic security for those who cannot benefit from such social protection schemes.
Decent work – promoted by the International Labor Organization since 1999 – means productive, rewarding, and secure jobs that provide safe working conditions, fair income, and social protection for the employed and their families. Decent work also implies equality of opportunity and treatment as well as good prospects for both personal development and social inclusion. This includes freedom for workers to express concerns, organize, and participate in decisions that affect their lives.
Ultimately, people will judge any change by what it means for their own lives. Secure and decent employment is surely at the top of most personal agendas, as it should be with respect to national agendas.
Decent employment is the surest way for the poor to escape poverty, and must therefore be a priority of any serious effort to reduce poverty on a sustained basis. Decent work for all is not a policy option, but an imperative.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2008.
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