Latest release
Global Employment Trends, Update May 2009 - [pdf 4430 KB] Press release: English , French , Spanish
The report on Global Employment Trends released in January 2009 assessed the impact of the financial crisis and the slowdown in world economic growth on jobs. Economic growth projections have since been revised sharply downward and new national labour market data have become available. Accordingly, this report has been prepared to provide an update to the ILO’s previous scenarios on the impact of the crisis on unemployment, working poverty, vulnerable employment and labour productivity.
The report finds that global unemployment could increase to a range of 210 million to 239 million in 2009, an increase of between 29 million to 59 million since 2007. Although the projected spike in the level of unemployment is a major global challenge, the potential increase in vulnerable employment is even more alarming. It is estimated that half of the global workforce – 7 times more than the number of unemployed – are likely to be in vulnerable employment this year, highlighting the urgent need for policies to address the substantial decent work deficits that are likely to grow even larger as the crisis unfolds.
Global output per worker is expected to decline by between 1.3 per cent and 2.3 per cent this year, which raises concerns given the strong link between labour productivity and working poverty. The highest scenario is that more than 1.4 billion workers will be living below the USD 2 poverty line in 2009, an increase of more than 200 million since 2007. Across all three scenarios, the number of working poor projected to grow in 2009.
Global Employment Trends (GET) series
With a view to developing information and analysis that is essential for promoting full, decent and productive work for all, including women and young people, the Global Employment Trends series review global and regional economic and labour market developments based on the most recently available data. The reports build on the Key Indicators of the Labour Market (KILM), and include a consistent set of tables with regional and global estimates of labour market indicators as generated from the Estimates and projections of labour market indicators. Each issue of Global Employment Trends also contains a short term labour market outlook based on projections or scenarios, focusing on unemployment, vulnerable employment and working poverty.
The reports have been published on a yearly basis since 2003, with special editions to analyze labour market trends for segments of the population such as youth (2004, 2006 and 2008) and women (2004, 2007, 2008 and 2009), or for certain regions. The January 2009 issue focused on the labour market impact of the global economic crisis. An update of the crisis impact was issued in May 2009. The gender impact of the crisis was the main subject of the Global Employment Trends for Women in March 2009.
A word of caution: Each GET, its data and analysis, is the result of a new run of the Global Employment Trends Model, which uses as input the latest available labour market information from the ILO and other sources to generate the world and regional aggregates. This means each new report is based on the best available estimates at that point in time and that the time series of world and regional aggregates from one report to the next are not comparable. The most recent GET should always be taken as the most up-to-date source of world and regional estimates of labour market information.
Links to previous GET reports (by theme)
Economic crisis and labour market impact
- Global Employment Trends for Women, March 2009 - [pdf 607 KB]
- Global Employment Trends, January 2009 - [pdf 916 KB]
- Global Employment Trends, Brief October 2005: Employment Impact in Pakistan of South Asia Earthquake - [pdf 69 KB]
Gender: Global Employment Trends for Women
- March 2009 - [pdf 607 KB]
- March 2008 - [pdf 387 KB]
- March 2007 - [pdf 336 KB]
- March 2004 - [pdf 826 KB]