DefinePK

Abstract

First, an overview of the world economy to provide us with the stark evidence of the deep economic and social crisis which the world still faces despite the process of far reaching economic reforms and adjustments which many countries have undertaken over the past decade and a half, Global unemployment today, as a proportion of potential employment, is higher than at any time since the Great Depression. Of a world labour force estimated at 2.8 billion people, an estimated 30 per cent are not productively employed. More than 120 million people are registered as unemployed throughout the world, in that they seek and are available for work but cannot find it. An estimated 700 million people are underemployed, the ‘working poor’, and they form the bulk of the estimated 1.1 billion absolute poor in the world. With new entrants joining the labour force at an increasing rate, the pressures on the employment situation and poverty problem will further intensify in the coming years.