Employment and unemployment

GLOBAL MOBILITY AND EMPLOYMENT

The global supply of labor almost doubled in absolute numbers between the 1980s and early 2000s, with half of that growth coming from Asia. At the same time, the rate at which new workers entered the workforce in the Western world began to decline. The growing pool of global labor is accessed by employers in more advanced economies through various methods, including imports of goods, offshoring of production, and immigration. Global labor arbitrage, the practice of accessing the lowest-cost workers from all parts of the world, is partly a result of this enormous growth in the workforce. While most of the absolute increase in this global labor supply consisted of less-educated workers (those without higher education), the relative supply of workers with higher education increased by about 50 percent during the same period. From 1980 to 2010, the global workforce grew from 1. 2 to 2. 9 billion people. According to a 2012 report by the McKinsey Global Institute, this was caused mostly by developing nations, where there was a " farm to factory" transition. Non-farming jobs grew from 54 percent in 1980 to almost 73 percent in 2010. This industrialization took an estimated 620 million people out of poverty and contributed to the economic development of China, India and others. The Institute estimates that increased exports in developing countries contribute to one-fifth of non-farm jobs in those nations and that immigrants from developing countries contributed to 40 percent of the workforce in advanced ones. By 2008 foreign-born workers accounted for 17 percent of all STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) positions in the United States.

Employment and unemployment

Employment is growing fastest in emerging and developing economies. Over the past 5 years, the incidence of long-term unemployment (the share of unemployed persons out of work for 12 months or more) has increased 60% in the advanced and developing economies for which data exist. Global unemployment is expected to approach 208 million in 2015, compared with slightly over 200 million in 2012.

From January 2012 to January 2013, Italy experienced the largest increase in its unemployment rate (+2. 1 percentage points), followed by the Netherlands (+1. 0 percentage point), and France (+0. 6 percentage point). Over that same period, Canada experienced the largest decrease in its unemployment rate (− 0. 5 percentage points), followed by the United States (− 0. 4 percentage point).

The number of people employed in precarious work (also called " vulnerable employment" )— employment that is poorly paid, insecure, unprotected, and cannot support a household—has increased dramatically in recent decades. This includes part-time employment, self-employment or freelance work, homeworkers, fixed-term or temporary work, on-call work, other contingent work, and telecommuting jobs.

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