20 Million Jobless Projected as Global Wealth Gap Widens

by James Parks, Oct 21, 2008

Even as the gap between the world’s rich and poor widens, the global financial crisis threatens to throw another 20 million women and men out of work, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO), an arm of the United Nations.

ILO Director-General Juan Somavia said the organization’s preliminary estimates are that the “number of unemployed could rise from 190 million in 2007 to 210 million in late 2009.” He adds:

The number of working poor living on less than $1 a day could rise by some 40 million—and those at $2 a day by more than 100 million.

This is not simply a crisis on Wall Street, this is a crisis on all streets. We need an economic rescue plan for working families and the real economy, with rules and policies that deliver decent jobs. We must link better productivity to salaries and growth to employment. We must return to the basic function of finance, which is to promote the real economy. To lend so that entrepreneurs can invest, innovate, produce jobs and goods and services.

The projected global rise in joblessness comes at the same time the gap between global wage gap is widening “dramatically,” a new ILO report says. Even though the global economy created some 30 million new jobs since the early 1990s, the report says wage inequality increased in most regions of the world.

World of Work Report 2008: Income Inequalities in the Age of Financial Globalization was released last week by the ILO’s International Institute for Labor Studies. The annual study shows that of the 85 countries examined, more than two-thirds, including the United States and China, experienced an increase in income inequality between 1990 and 2005. During the same period, the income gap between the top and bottom 10 percent of wage earners increased in 70 percent of the countries. Click here to read the full report.

The gap is even greater between top executives and average employees, the report said. Using figures from several academic studies in various countries, the ILO found in the United States, chief executive officers of the 15 largest companies earned 520 times more than the average worker in 2007, up from 320 times more in 2003. In the Netherlands, CEOs earned more than 100 times more than the average Dutch employee in 2007, compared to 50 times more in 2003. In Hong Kong and China, CEOs were paid on average 160 times and 104 times, respectively, more than the wage of the average worker.  

The report calls for long-term action to create a fair economic recovery, including promotion of the ILO’s Decent Work Agenda to link economic, labor and social policies to boost employment and improve incomes.

		Become a Fan on Facebook			Follow Us on Twitter			Subscribe to YouTube			Subscribe to Blog RSS

Print This Article | E-Mail This Article |Comments (0)