Skip to main content

Home/ Ergonweb/ Group items tagged economy

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Kirsten Newitt

Jobs as a Scorecard: Latest trends in global labour markets - World Bank - 0 views

  • According to the latest edition of JobTrends—a quarterly series monitoring labor markets in a sample of emerging economies—employment growth maintained its gradual ascent in the first quarter of 2012. In the countries surveyed, continued economic growth helped employment reach a growth rate of 2.9 percent in that period.
  • Keeping with the overall trend, labor markets in Europe and Central Asia continued then their steady recovery, with striking declines in unemployment in Lithuania, Moldova, Romania, and the Russian Federation. Similarly, selected labor markets in Latin America also improved, amid a slowdown in economic growth. In the four East Asian countries included in the report, employment and wage growth improved, with China’s employment growth jumping to 9.9 percent.
  • At the same time, however, the median unemployment rate increased slightly in the sample from 5.8 to 6.2 percent, signaling that some economies may have then started to have difficulties maintaining a high pace of job creation, as they were continuing to feel the effects of the financial crisis in advanced economies.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The World Bank now projects that developing country growth as a whole will slow to 5.3 percent in 2012, with GDP growth in high-income and Euro Area countries trailing far behind at 1.4 and -0.3 percent respectively
  • Despite this somewhat gloomy prognosis for the near future, emerging and other developing countries still have a great potential to “switch over”, and in the mid-term, consolidate their position as the new engines of global economic growth.
Kirsten Newitt

McKinsey report on global labour market trends - June 2012 - 0 views

  • Over the past three decades, as developing economies industrialized and began to compete in world markets, a global labor market started taking shape. As more than one billion people entered the labor force, a massive movement from “farm to factory” sharply accelerated growth of productivity and per capita GDP in China and other traditionally rural nations, helping to bring hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. To raise productivity, developed economies invested in labor-saving technologies and tapped global sources of low-cost labor.
  • Today, the strains on this market are becoming increasingly apparent. In advanced economies, demand for high-skill labor is now growing faster than supply, while demand for low-skill labor remains weak. Labor’s overall share of income, or the share of national income that goes to worker compensation, has fallen, and income inequality is growing as lower-skill workers—including 75 million young people—experience unemployment, underemployment, and stagnating wages.
Stuart Bell

Summary of wage situation in China - 0 views

  •  
    "Wage levels in China have increased continually over the last two decades as the economy has developed and the private sector has created new employment opportunities. However, disparities among geographic regions, industrial sectors and between top executives and ordinary workers have also increased significantly, widening the rich-poor gap. Moreover, wage increases for China's lowest paid workers have often been eroded by higher costs of living, and the issue of wage arrears remains a serious and unresolved problem throughout the country."
Kirsten Newitt

World of Work Report 2011- ILO says world heading for a new and deeper jobs recession, ... - 2 views

  • In a grim analysis issued on the eve of the G20 leaders summit, the International Labour Organization (ILO) says the global economy is on the verge of a new and deeper jobs recession that will further delay the global economic recovery and may ignite more social unrest in scores of countries.
  • The new “World of Work Report 2011: Making markets work for jobs” says a stalled global economic recovery has begun to dramatically affect labour markets. On current trends, it will take at least five years to return employment in advanced economies to pre-crisis levels, one year later than projected in last year’s report.
  • The report also features a new “social unrest” index that shows levels of discontent over the lack of jobs and anger over perceptions that the burden of the crisis is not being shared fairly. It notes that in over 45 of the 119 countries examined, the risk of social unrest is rising.
Kirsten Newitt

China 2030: new World Bank research report on China - 0 views

  •  
    Major new research report that provides an assessment of the Chinese economy and recommendations for its medium term development strategy.
Stuart Bell

Freedom of association and development - 0 views

  •  
    New report by Ergon for the ILO looking at the ways in which strong, independent worker and employer organisations contribute to economic and social development. The study contains case studies from emerging economies and analysis of the roles played by freedom of association in a variety of spheres.
Kirsten Newitt

New Report from Human Rights Watch: Human Rights Conditions in South Africa's Fruit and... - 0 views

  •  
    Human Rights Watch report, Aug 2011. Workers in Western Cape province who help produce South Africa's renowned wines and fruit are denied adequate housing, proper safety equipment, and basic labor rights, HRW said in a report released today. The government of South Africa, along with the industries that employ these laborers, should take immediate steps to improve their working and housing conditions, HRW said. The 96-page report documents conditions that include on-site housing that is unfit for living, exposure to pesticides without proper safety equipment, lack of access to toilets or drinking water while working, and efforts to block workers from forming unions. While the Western Cape's fruit and wine industries contribute billions of rand to the country's economy, support tourism, and are enjoyed by consumers around the world, their farmworkers earn among the lowest wages in South Africa. The report also describes insecure tenure rights and threats of eviction for longtime residents on farms.
Kirsten Newitt

Are aid agencies facing an existential threat? - 0 views

  • The global economic landscape has evolved dramatically since 2000: developing and emerging economies have been driving global growth, new sources of development finance have mushroomed and the diversification of actors, instruments and delivery mechanisms has continued. Transformations in the poverty map and new forces on the supply side of development finance are challenging the international development architecture. This paper aims to stimulate debate on the future of this architecture. The authors project that, by 2025, the locus of global poverty will overwhelmingly be in fragile, mainly low-income and African, states, contrary to current policy preoccupations with the transitory phenomenon of poverty concentration in middle-income countries. Moreover, a smaller share of industrialised country income than ever before will potentially close the remaining global poverty gap, although direct income transfers are not yet feasible in many fragile country contexts. Against this backdrop, new institutions, business models and practices are challenging long-established ‘aid industry’ actors. Agencies providing development finance for improved social welfare, for mutual self-interest in growth and trade and for the provision of global public goods will find that, in each area, disruptors to their programmes may force a change in positioning.
  •  
    New report from ODI, July 2012.
Kirsten Newitt

China's factory activity shrinks further - 0 views

  • China's factory activity shrank again in December as demand at home and abroad slackened, a purchasing managers' survey showed on Friday.
  • "While the pace of slowdown is stabilising somewhat, weakening external demand is starting to bite," said Qu Hongbin, China economist at HSBC.
  • China's once turbo-charged economy is on track to slow for a fourth successive quarter, easing further from the first quarter's 9.7% annual growth rate with economists expecting the final three months of the year to have slipped below 9.5%.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Economists typically view growth of 7% to 8% as the bare minimum needed to generate enough jobs to help China absorb the urban influx of rural migrants and maintain social harmony.
Kirsten Newitt

Launch of UNCTAD Trade and Development Report 2012: Policies for inclusive and balanced... - 0 views

  • In this contribution to the on-going debate about the relationship between income inequality and growth, UNCTAD argues that rising inequality is neither a necessary condition for sound economic growth, nor its natural result. By contrast, full participation of all citizens in the proceeds of the economy as a whole in indispensable for successful and sustained development.
  • The Report further discusses what are widely perceived to be the main structural causes of recent changes in income distribution, including trade, technological change, and finance-led globalization. It argues that the impacts of globalization and technological change on domestic income distribution are not uniform. Rather, they depend on initial conditions and on how macroeconomic, financial and labour market policies interact with the forces of globalization and technological development. Structural changes do not necessarily lead to greater inequality if appropriate employment, wage, and income distribution policies are in place
  • Finally, the Report examines how labour-market institutions and policies, together with an appropriate macroeconomic framework, can respond to current challenges and lead to sustained growth and more inclusive development. It starts with the proposition that slow growth has a strong impact on inequality, due to high unemployment, which weakens the bargaining power of labour.
1 - 12 of 12
Showing 20 items per page