In January 2018, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) released the World Employment Social Outlook Trends. Global economic growth enhanced to 3.6 per cent in 2017, after hitting a six-year low of 3.2 per cent in 2016. The recovery was driven by expansions in developing, emerging and developed countries alike.
Following are the findings of the report:
* The global unemployment rate is expected to fall slightly to 5.5 per cent in 2018, from 5.6 per cent in 2017, marking a turnaround after three years of increasing unemployment rates. However, with a rising number of people entering the labour market in search of employment, the total number of unemployed is expected to remain stable in 2018, above 192 million. In 2019, the global unemployment rate is expected to remain essentially unchanged, whereas the number of unemployed is projected to grow 1.3 million.
* Workers in vulnerable forms of employment are likely to increase in number. Globally, the significant progress achieved in the past in reducing vulnerable employment has essentially stalled since 2012. Around 42 per cent of workers (or 1.4 billion) worldwide were estimated to be in vulnerable forms of employment in 2017, while this share was expected to remain particularly high in developing and emerging countries, at above 76 per cent and 46 per cent respectively.
* In the area of working poverty, the global labour market has seen only weak progress. In 2017, extreme working poverty remained widespread, with more than 300 million workers in emerging and developing countries having a per capita household income or consumption of less than US$ 1.90 (purchasing power parity) per day. Overall, progress in reducing working poverty is too slow to keep pace with the growing labour force in developing countries, where the number of people in acute working poverty is likely to increase beyond 114 million in 2018, to 40 per cent of all employed people.
* The world continues to experience diverse trends in employment outcomes. Developed countries are expected to enter their sixth consecutive year of reducing unemployment rates, falling to 5.5 per cent in 2018, the lowest rate since 2007. By contrast, developing countries have experienced a significant growth in unemployment rates between 2014 and 2017, caused by major economic downturns, in part due to the commodity price slump in many large economies, such as the Russian Federation and Brazil.