The consequences of the Great Recession and the long crisis are still felt in the labour markets of many countries. In Spain, for example, seen in details such as the high unemployment rate, is still hovering around 14%, or in the under-utilisation of the workforce, which would affect 23% of the workers, some 5.4 million in the third quarter of 2019. This last phenomenon is still affecting a lot more young people, since the percentage shoots up and reaches 48%, according to estimates by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in its Report of socio-economic prospects for the employment of this year.
To calculate how many people are affected by that “underutilization of the labor force,” the ILO has in mind for the unemployed, to having a part-time job wanting full-time or the discouraged who have given up looking for a job, but are willing to return to the labour market at any time. When you have all these groups into account, the crisis still leaves an open wound that in the European Union would affect 14% of all workers and 28% of young people, figures significantly lower than the Spanish.
The numbers of the ILO, presented in this report just a day before the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland) and at the same time that the IMF presents its upgrade of growth forecasts, they say that that collective labour under-utilised around the world reached to 470 million people, or what is the same, 27% of the workforce. “For millions of ordinary people, it is increasingly difficult to build better lives thanks to the work”, says Guy Ryder, ILO director-general, in the press release that accompanies the report.
This situation mainly affects women,” adds the representative in Spain of this international organization, dependent of the UN and integrated by trade unions, employers and governments, in presentation in Madrid of the report. This is based on the fact that women are the majority of those who work part-time and, therefore, they are also the most affected by underemployment.
As explained Nieto, the study includes countries from all over the world with labour realities, very different. It quantifies how many workers it affects the moderate poverty or extreme in the world (revenues of less than 3.2 us$): about 630 million. “Many of these workers lack rights and access to social protection systems,” notes the report.
One of the complaints that makes the ILO is the high level of informality in employment in certain countries. There are areas of Africa that reach to 95%, according to economist Roger Gomis, although throughout the world stood at around 45%.
The economists of the ILO also forecast that this year’s increase in the number of unemployed persons in all the world at 2.5 million. The cause, they explained, is in “the slowdown in economic growth while the global labour force increases”.
Another of the calculations provided by the organization directed by Guy Ryder is the evolution of the income of the work. Using its own methodology, which includes wage earners and the self-employed, it is observed that in the last year this income would have declined all over the world from at 53.7% of GDP in 20004 to 51.4% in 2017, the last data available.
This percentage grows a lot in the more developed countries, which hovers around 60%. In Spain this participation waned in more than five points from the peak reached in 2009, was 66.6%, to 2017, 61,2%. So much so that Spain is one of the countries featured in this section of the report, together with Germany, the Uk and Italy, among the europeans.
