Crisis hit jobs in big economies ‘harder’

ISTANBUL/GENEVA - Reuters

The ILO says big economies’ unemployment rates are higher than in the pre-crisis period. REUTERS photo

Turkey is one of few countries which have higher employment and lower unemployment than their pre-crisis levels, while many advanced economies are still grappling with high unemployment even five years after the outbreak of the global financial crisis of 2007, an International Labor Organization (ILO) report has showed.

The average fall in the unemployment level in the countries currently under pre-crisis levels, including Turkey, Chile, Columbia, Germany and Israel, was a 1.6 percent decrease over the 2007-2012 period, the ILO said in its annual World of Work Report.

The report also revealed that the employment rates exceeded pre-crisis levels in 30 percent of the 26 countries analyzed, while income equalities in more than 50 percent of them had broadened.

The most prominent finding of the report was that emerging and developing economies’ unemployment was recovering much faster than the majority of advanced economies, which raised the risks of social unrest in these countries as well.

The potential for social unrest in European Union countries is higher than anywhere else in the world, and the already yawning gaps between rich and poor, a major trigger, are likely to widen globally.

The ILO said social unrest, in the form of strikes, work stoppages, street protests and demonstrations, had increased in most countries since the economic and financial crisis that began in 2008.

But the risk, it said, “is highest among the EU-27 countries – it increased from 34 percent in 2006-07 to 46 percent in 2011-2012.” However, the risk was not evenly spread and had not grown in at least seven of the member states.

Those most vulnerable, the report said, were Greek Cyprus, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain. However the risk of social unrest had declined in Belgium, Germany, Finland, Slovakia and Sweden since 2010.