The world is facing a global jobs crisis that is hurting the chances of reigniting economic growth and there is no magic bullet to solve the problem, the World Bank warned yesterday in a study.
In the study released at a G20 Labour and Employment Ministerial Meeting in Australia, the Bank said an extra 600 million jobs needed to be created worldwide by 2030 just to cope with the expanding population.
“There’s little doubt there is a global jobs crisis,” said the World Bank’s senior director for jobs, Nigel Twose.
“As this report makes clear, there is a shortage of jobs — and quality jobs.
“And equally disturbingly, we’re also seeing wage and income inequality widening within many G20 countries, although progress has been made in a few emerging economies, like Brazil and South Africa.” He said that overall emerging market economies had done better than advanced G20 countries in job creation, driven primarily by countries such as China and Brazil, but the outlook was bleak.
“Current projections are dim. Challenging times loom large,” said Twose. The report, compiled with the OECD and International Labour Organisation, said more than 100m people were unemployed in G20 economies and 447m were considered “working poor”, living on less than $2 a day.
