The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has said an estimated 156 million employed youths in emerging and developing countries are living in extreme poverty.
It also said about 70 million people, who lost their job due to global recession, are yet to be employed.
ILO’s Director-General Guy Ryder, in a statement to the International Monetary and Financial Committee and the World Bank Development Committee meeting in Washington, said the potential of the generation to achieve the 2030 sustainable development goal is wasted.
Ryder said against the backdrop of slow growth, the outlook for labour markets remains troubled and likely to worsen, adding: “Eight years on, the world economy has not fully recovered from the global financial crisis, and there is a high risk that it will remain stuck in a slow growth trap unless urgent coordinated action is taken to boost growth and make it more inclusive.”
He said there are over 70 million women and men out of jobs, who would have had work if pre-crisis growth had resumed. With the latest downward revisions in growth prospects the jobs gap could rise to over 80 million by 2020.
“Global real wage growth dropped sharply during the crisis, recovered in 2010 but has since decelerated. If China, where wage growth was faster than elsewhere is not included, wage growth fell to below the one per cent per annum recorded in the crisis years.
“Increasing decent work opportunities and improving wages are key to breaking out of the slow growth trap and rekindling a virtuous circle of increased investment, rising productivity and sustainable enterprise and wage and consumption growth,” Ryder said.
The ILO boss maintained that the ILO and the World Bank’s shared objective is to increase the number of countries that can provide universal social protection, supporting countries to design and implement universal and sustainable social protection systems.
He said: “Universal social protection refers to the integrated set of policies designed to ensure income security and support to all people across the life cycle – paying particular attention to the poor and the vulnerable,” Ryder said.
He noted the ILO/IFC Better Work programme in eight developing nations targeted on garment supply chains, which he said, is reducing the prevalence of abusive workplace practices, increasing productivity and pay as well as reducing excessive working hours, and creating positive effects outside the factory for workers.
Ryder argued that considerable shifts in employment driven by openness to international trade and investment “call for strengthened labour market institutions” to ease worker mobility, increase training, promote sustainable wage setting, ensure adequate social protection, improve working conditions and enhance respect for international labour standards.
“The widely ratified ILO conventions on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work are key benchmarks for international investment and trade governance mechanisms. Their near-universal acceptance, which demonstrates the value of ILO membership, has allowed them to become the globally accepted baseline for fair treatment in the workplace and a starting point for addressing labour conditions and sustainable development,” he said.
He said surveys in 28 countries showed that a quarter of young people, aged between 15 and 29 years old, are neither employed, nor in education or training (NEET), a status, which carries risks of underemployment, skill deterioration and discouragement.