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Unemployment rates worldwide, 2005:
| World: |
6.3% |
| East Asia: |
3.8% |
| Rich countries: |
6.7% |
| |
United States: |
5.1% |
| |
European Union: |
8.7% |
| |
Japan: |
4.5% |
| |
Australia: |
4.8% |
| Latin America: |
7.7% |
| Africa: |
9.7% |
| Middle East: |
13.2% |
As of 2005, the International Labor Organization counts about 2.85 billion workers on the job around the world. The biggest fraction, though no longer a majority, work in agriculture -- farms, plantations, and fisheries employ 1.15 billion people -- while 600 million work in industry and another 1.1 billion in services.
The ILO data has some bright spots for the world's workers this Labor Day. For one thing, the total is up by 16 percent since 1995, implying a net gain of 400 million new jobs. Also, the world's lowest-income workers seem to be doing a bit better: Since 1995, the number of workers earning $1 a day or less has fallen by 100 million, from 627 million to 520 million. Their slightly better-paid colleagues may be hitting a "glass ceiling" however, the number of $2-a-day workers, 1.35 billion in 1995, has risen slightly to 1.38 billion in 2005. And while the number of $1-a-day workers has fallen by 50 million in South Asia and 70 million in East Asia, it has risen by 4 million in Latin America and 27 million in Africa.
Less happily, as populations have grown, unemployment rates have risen a bit faster than total employment. The world's unemployment rate, averaging 6.0 percent in 1995, was 6.3 percent last year. This means 192 million people are unemployed, almost half of them young people. East Asia's unemployment rate is the lowest among the world's major regions, at 3.8 percent, while the highest unemployment rates -- nearly double the world average -- are in the Middle East.
The International Labor Organization's Global Employment Trends 2006:
http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/
strat/global.htm
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics compares job creation, unemployment rates, working women, and wages across countries. Some especially interesting studies cover comparative labor-force statistics in the United States and 10 other wealthy countries since 1960; wage rates in 31 European, Western Hemisphere, and Asian states; and manufacturing jobs and wages in China:
http://stats.bls.gov/fls/home.htm
PPI's Work, Family & Community Project:
http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ka.cfm?knlgAreaID=114
The Economic Policy Institute's annual State of Working America report has international comparisons:
http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/
swa06_ch08_international.pdf
The OECD's Employment page:
http://www.oecd.org/topic/
0,2686,en_2649_37457_1_1_1_1_37457,00.html
