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All the signs point to a global economy that is making a weak but steady recovery.
Corporate profits are at an all-time high and stocks look ready to take off.
But a look at the labour markets shows a far different picture.
Almost 202 million people are unemployed worldwide -- up five million from last year....
and another four million will join them in the coming year.
So many people, 23 million of them, have been out of work for so long,
they've stopped looking, especially young people.
Today more than one out of eight people under the age of 25 are unemployed.
That's twice the number of adults who are out of work.
And for the long-term unemployed,
it takes twice as long to find a new job than before the crisis began.
So what can we do to turn this situation around?
A lot of job seekers leave the labour market because they are discouraged
-- they can't find jobs because they lack the right skills
and employers can't find workers with the skills they need.
[Ekkehard Ernst, Economist, ILO] "Active labour market policies
enhance the efficiency of labour markets.
They improve information and coordination to match unemployed persons with vacancies,
they support and encourage appropriate training and retraining.
This helps firms to find the right workers faster,
fill in open vacancies more rapidly
and strengthen the recovery."
Companies are reluctant to hire because consumers aren't spending
as families struggle with high levels of debt.
[Steve Kapsos, Economist, ILO] "Weak household spending has kept companies
from expanding their productive capacity
because they're uncertain where new demand for their products will come from.
These factors have put pressure on government revenues
and many governments have responded by reducing their spending.
This had provided crucial support to labour markets in the depths of the crisis...."
According to the ILO, if we stay the course we're on now,
we can expect global unemployment to reach 215 million in the next five years.
But a job-friendly, well-coordinated fiscal stimulus
could raise global employment by 6.1 million
steering a jobless recovery into one that is job-rich.