‘11.5 million jobs likely in South Asia in 5 yrs’

ISLAMABAD/NEW DELHI: There is a light at the end of the tunnel for the hundreds of thousands, unemployed in South Asia. The latest World of Work Report by the United Nations’ International Labour Organisation (ILO) says, as many as 11.5 million jobs will be created in the region during 2014-2019.

While the average employment growth in the South Asian region during 2009-2014 was 8.5 million, the ILO predicts a significant growth in work prospects in the coming five years, although there’s little guarantee of labour protection, job quality or equality for employees in countries such as Pakistan and India, where the bulk of the population is expected to remain in the informal sector, devoid of benefits. The shift in opportunities globally is also impacting the pattern of migration with most people from South Asia preferring European countries, while there is also reverse migration from advanced economies towards developing ones.  

International news agency- AFP says that the ILO report places Pakistan in the lower middle income countries (LMIs), a group which includes economies where the average per capita income ranges between US$1,000 and US$4,000. According to the report the informal employment, which remains largely outside labour and social protection institutions, is widespread and even predominant in low-income countries like Pakistan and India.

Informal employment accounts for a significant share of total non-agricultural employment in Pakistan with as much as 73% of the work force employed in the non-agriculture informal sector while in India it prevails at around 84%.

The report also identifies that in Pakistan around 30% of people aged over 65 are engaged in the work force with little cover of pensions.

The ILO report says workers in developing countries are increasingly moving to better jobs and joining the middle class, but 839 million workers still earn less than $2 a day.

“The developing countries are generally in a process of catching up with the advanced economies,” ILO chief Guy Ryder told reporters in Geneva ahead of the release of the agency’s annual World of Work Report on Tuesday, 27 May.

Between 1980 and 2011, per capita income in the developing countries like Senegal, Vietnam and Tunisia on average grew 3.3 % each year, which is far faster than the 1.8% growth seen in advanced economies, the report said.

Today, more than four in 10 workers in such countries are considered to be in the so-called “developing middle class”- meaning that they earn more than $4 a day – up from fewer than two in 10 workers two decades ago.

Yet, more than half of all workers in the developing world – some 1.5 billion people are in precarious positions, without contracts and social protections and often wallowing in poverty. Around 839 million of them, a full third of all workers in such countries, earn less than $2 a day.

That however is down from more than half of all workers in such countries in the early 2000s, the report said.

In its analysis of the situation in 140 developing and emerging economies, the ILO concluded that nations that tackled working poverty, invested in creating quality jobs and in getting workers out of precarious employment had weathered the global financial crisis far better than those that did not.

“The investment in human capital is coming through in improved growth,” Ryder said, adding: “one needs to depart from any simplistic notion that development can be kick-started by reducing worker rights.”

Since the global financial crisis of 2007, the convergence between conditions in the developed and developing worlds has picked up speed. Some 30.6 million more people have been added to the global ranks of the unemployed since the crisis began, leaving a total of 199.8 million people jobless last year, with the number set to swell to 213 million by 2019.

The global unemployment rate has stabilised at around 6%, a level expected to remain through 2017 but advanced economies have suffered the biggest rise in jobless numbers.

Developed countries have on average seen their unemployment rate stabilise at around 8.5%, up from 5.8% before the crisis, while developing countries suffered only a brief hike before their jobless rate fell back to around pre-crisis levels of 5.4%, the report said.

And the crisis has affected working conditions everywhere.

“Many developing countries, notably in Latin America and Asia, are making efforts to tackle inequalities and improve job quality as well as social protection,” lead author of the ILO report Moazam Mahmood said.

“By contrast,” he said, “a number of advanced economies, notably in Europe, seem to be going in the opposite direction.”

The shift in opportunities is also affecting migration patterns. Some 231.5 million people last year were living in a country other than the one they were born in, the report said.

While the European Union by far remains the favoured destination, with 51% of migrants settled there, migrants have since the crisis, increasingly been moving between developing countries, the ILO said.

More and more educated young people from crisis-hit developed countries are also emigrating to emerging economies, the report found.

“Already south-south migration is on the rise while workers are also leaving advanced economies, particularly some hard-hit European countries, for work opportunities in developing countries,” Mahmood said.

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