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 per cent 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 per cent of workers – 1.3 billion people – do not earn enough to lift themselves and their families above the $2-aday 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 halfdecade 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 labour, 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 labour 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 per cent in 2007, well ahead of agriculture (34.9 per cent) and industry (22.4 per cent). 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 behavioural obligations. In other words, entitlement to unemployment benefits is ceasing to be a social right.

While recognising 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 21st 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 labour flexibility.

Governments have been promoting individual savings accounts for pensions, health, and unemployment insurance; often, these are either mandatory or subsidised 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 Labour Organisation 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, organise, 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. Jomo

Kwame Sundaram, UN Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development, was in 2007 awarded the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. Johan Schölvinck is Director of the Division for Social Policy and Development, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2008.

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