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ILO / WESO REPORT
STORY: ILO / WESO REPORT
TRT: 2:59
SOURCE: ILO
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 20 JANUARY 2020, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
1.Various shots, press conference
2.SOUNDBITE (English) Guy Ryder, Director-General, International Labour Organization (ILO):
“Young people face particular labour market challenges. And there is an extraordinary figure in this report, it is that 22 per cent of young people, 267 million of them, are in the NEET category: not in employment, not in education and training. And this is, I think, one of the greatest social dramas of our time.”
3. Med shot, press conference
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Guy Ryder, Director-General, International Labour Organization (ILO):
“Gender, obviously is a major dimension in vector of inequality. In 2019, the female labour force participation was just 47 per cent, and that is 27 percentage points below the male rate.”
5. Med shot, reporter
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Guy Ryder, Director-General, International Labour Organization (ILO):
“What I think is new and, I think, very important about this report, is that it goes beyond that headline figure of global unemployment, which remains at 5.4 per cent, 188 million. It extends on that to look at the extent of what we term, labour under-utilization. So these are people who are not officially unemployed, they are not part of that 188 million, but people who maybe are not working as many hours as they would like to work. This is time under-utilization. Or people who are sort of tenuously connected to the labour market. People who are available for work, but perhaps they’ve given up trying. Or people who are already beginning to look for work, even if today they are not available for it. So this is the potential workforce. And here’s the point: if you add up all of those categories together, you get from that 5.4 per cent of open unemployment to 13 per cent of the global work force, who in one way or another are underutilized.”
7. Wide shot, press briefing room
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Guy Ryder, Director-General, International Labour Organization (ILO):
“We have a major problem of creation of decent work opportunities. And that problem is probably bigger than we tend to realise from focusing exclusively on unemployment figures. But the report goes beyond that to look for example at levels of inequality in labour markets. One familiar story, which is documented is the continuing decline of the labour share of national income: that percentage of GDP that goes to workers as opposed to capital. That’s still going down. But within that labour sector, within that labour share, we’re seeing a very, very skewed, unequal distribution of income.”
9. Close up, report
Almost half a billion people are working fewer paid hours than they would like or lack adequate access to paid work, according to a new International Labour Organization (ILO) report.
In addition, the World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2020 (WESO) shows that unemployment is projected to increase by around 2.5 million in 2020.
Global unemployment has been roughly stable for the last nine years but slowing global economic growth means that, as the global labour force increases, not enough new jobs are being generated to absorb new entrants to the labour market.
Guy Ryder, ILO’s Director-General told reporters in Geneva today (20 Jan), “young people face particular labour market challenges. And there is an extraordinary figure in this report, it is that 22 per cent of young people, 267 million of them, are in the NEET category: not in employment, not in education and training. And this is, I think, one of the greatest social dramas of our time.”
Ryder also said, “gender, obviously is a major dimension in vector of inequality. In 2019, the female labour force participation was just 47 per cent, and that is 27 percentage points below the male rate.”
The WESO shows that the mismatch between labour supply and demand extends beyond unemployment into broader labour under-utilization. In addition to the global number of unemployed (188 million), 165 million people don’t have enough paid work and 120 million have either given up actively searching for work or otherwise lack access to the labour market. In total, more than 470 million people worldwide are affected.
Ryder noted that what is very important about the report is that “it goes beyond that headline figure of global unemployment, which remains at 5.4 per cent, 188 million. It extends on that to look at the extent of what we term, labour under-utilization.”
He explained, “these are people who are not officially unemployed, they are not part of that 188 million, but people who maybe are not working as many hours as they would like to work. This is time under-utilization. Or people who are sort of tenuously connected to the labour market. People who are available for work, but perhaps they’ve given up trying. Or people who are already beginning to look for work, even if today they are not available for it.”
Ryder continued, “so this is the potential workforce. And here’s the point: if you add up all of those categories together, you get from that 5.4 per cent of open unemployment to 13 per cent of the global work force, who in one way or another are underutilized.”
The Director-General also reiterated, “we have a major problem of creation of decent work opportunities. And that problem is probably bigger than we tend to realise from focusing exclusively on unemployment figures."
He continued, “but the report goes beyond that to look for example at levels of inequality in labour markets. One familiar story, which is documented is the continuing decline of the labour share of national income: that percentage of GDP that goes to workers as opposed to capital. That’s still going down. But within that labour sector, within that labour share, we’re seeing a very, very skewed, unequal distribution of income.”
According to ILO, this flagship report analyses key labour market issues, including unemployment, under-employment, labour under-utilization and working poverty. Later in the week, Ryder will attend the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos where he will take part in several events relating to the world of work.
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