“A global jobs crisis of mammoth proportions…”

Before this calamitous global economic unwinding, economists at the World Economic Forum in Davos in early 2006 expressed major concern about the growing crisis of unemployment around the world. “Growth of the past many years has not been translated into enough jobs in many countries…. Despite a robust growth of 4.3 per cent in 2005, the world economy did not deliver the 40 million jobs needed annually over the next decade for people entering the workforce.” The ILO report showed that in 2005, of the more than 2.8 billion workers in the world, 1.4 billion still did not earn enough to lift themselves and their families above the $2-a-day poverty line - just as many as 10 years ago…."Economic growth alone isn't adequately addressing global employment needs," said [the International Labour Organisation's director general Juan] Somavia. "We are facing a global jobs crisis of mammoth proportions. We need new policies." [1]

Two years previously Luke Exilarch wrote on the growing unemployment in the US associated with national economic ‘growth’:

"The number of men between 16 and 64 [in the US], ... was 93 million. . . Of those 93 million men, the government admits that 4.4 million of them are unemployed. And when I say unemployed, I mean utterly and completely inactive. The government considers someone “employed” if they work as little as one hour a week. People who do not even work one hour a week are still considered “employed” if they are “temporarily absent” from work.

But in addition to the 4.4 million men who are officially “unemployed” the government admits that 28.7 million men over 16 are “not in the labor force.” Subtracting from this 28.7 million the estimated 11.9 million men 65 and over belonging to that group, results in 16.8 million men between the ages of 16 and 64 who are “not in the labor force.” Adding the 4.4 million officially unemployed to the 16.8 million who are factually unemployed yields a total of 21.2 million unemployed men between the ages of 16 and 64...." [2]

Why is this happening?

How much of this loss of global opportunity can be attributed to the alarming degradation and depletion of the world’s biosphere over the last few decades. The economic consequences of this wholesale rape were hidden from public scrutiny by fraudulent forms of cost-benefit analysis, worthy only of "a damning indictment” [3] and performed by mainstream economists.

Other factors:

Higher energy prices.

Global corporate conglomerates were able to use capital far more intensively.

The emergence and dominance of uneconomic forms of profit seeking such as the excessively-leveraged (private equity) buyouts of public corporations followed by the associated asset-stripping and rationalization of the workforce that are now unfolding into predictable bankruptcy or taxpayer-funded bailout. [4]

To what extent did the ‘recruitment’(often forced and incorporating land eviction [5], [6], [7], [8], [9] ) of an extra billion people into the global workforce have on rising global unemployment. [10]

It's hard to see this social crisis being addressed by a simple reduction in working hours. I agree with the sentiments of Mikhail Gorbachev as he expressed them this last month. We need "a serious reconsideration of the very foundations of our socio-economic model of modern industrial society"[11]...but that is another article.



[1] Global Trends by Martin Khor
Thursday 2 February 2006
Problem of “jobless growth” highlighted
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/gtrends90.htm

[2] The Real Unemployment Rate is 23%: How and Why Jobs are Vanishing from America
Luke Exilarch. March 20, 2005
http://www.exilemm.com/e-sub-realunemployment.shtml

[3] Rober F Kennedy Jr’s commentary on the book ‘Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing’by Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling.

[4] The Bust of the Private Equity and LBO Bubble
Nouriel Roubini | Feb 22, 2008
http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/245686#readcomments

[5] ‘Abahlali baseMjondolo: The South African Shack Dwellers Movement’
May/June 2008. The Body, the complete HIV/AIDS resource website
http://www.thebody.com/content/art47450.html

[6] Human Rights Watch 2006 Report on Indonesia, III. Background
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2006/indonesia0906/3.htm

[7] Special Exploitation Zones [India]
By Tejal Kanitkar & Puru Kulkarni. 18 October, 2006
http://www.countercurrents.org/ind-kanitkar181006.htm

[8] Inside China Today
Archive for the 'Forced Eviction' Category
http://insidechinatoday.net/category/forced-eviction/

[9] SOHNews Archive for the 'Forced Eviction' Category
http://sohnews.com/category/forced-eviction/

[10] This process was stepped up heavily in the 1980s in India, China and South America (in particular) and continues to present day.

[11] 'Mr Capitalism, tear down that immorality' Australian Financial Review, page 65. 31st October 2008.