Global unemployment figures to rise by 2019

The global unemployment figure currently stands at 201 million.

This was revealed by Claudia Coenjaerts, director of the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Decent Work Team and Office for the Caribbean at the Employers Solution Centre (ESC). ESC is a subsidiary of the Employers’ Consultative Association (ECA) of Trinidad and Tobago.

Coenjaerts told the group of International Relation and Human Resource specialists among others gathered at the Hyatt Regency Trinidad, Friday, “The state of employment is not too great.

According to our most recent ILO report there are 201 million people without work. By 2019 this number could rise to 212.” The two-day symposium entitled “Preparing for the Road Ahead-Retooling strategy” saw a number of speakers among them former Finance Minister Mariano Browne, Former Oilfield Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU) Secretary General David Abdullah among others.

She said over 60 percent of workers globally had any kind of employment contract. Less than 45 percent of wage and salaried workers, she added, are employed on a full time permanent basis and even that was declining.

By 2030, the world would need to create 600 million jobs just to keep pace with the age of the working age population, she said.

Coenjaerts said 2016 saw 8,000 jobs losses in TT alone.

The rise in non-standard forms of employment led to greater job insecurity and poses challenges to companies.

She added that the lack of data with respect to job creation was missing from an informed analysis of the jobs needed by 2020 or 2030. She said the situation and prospects around the world of work, “leaves us worried.” She said while the Government was worried about fiscal sustainability, it was important that the rise in unemployment was dealt with so that there is not too much setback in efforts at poverty reduction. “It is important that we prevent too high a human cost of the recession already taking place. As this would certainly in turn have an impact in the economy and in your enterprise,” she said.

In a report prepared by Dr Andre Vincent entitled The Big Picture: An Analysis of the Industrial Relations Climate, 2006- 206, he noted that there had been a decline in industrial dispute from 2013 to 2015 but that industrial disputes had begun to trend upward again in 2016