Unemployment at historic high in 2006; gender gap widens: ILO

New Delhi, Jan 25 (UNI) Unemployment worldwide remained at a historic high in 2006 despite strong global economic growth as also gender disparity which emerged as worrying factors, the International Labour Office (ILO) said in its annual report released here today.

The ILO's "Global Employment Trends 2007" reported a growing gap in South Asia, with only 36 per cent of working age women actively engaged in the labour market against 82.2 per cent of men.

This is the second largest gender participation gap in the world, behind only the West Asia and North Africa - although the gap in these regions has been narrowing much faster during the last decade.

Moreover, South Asian women who are in the labour force are more likely to be unemployed than their male counterparts, and the gap is widening. In the past decade, female unemployment rates rose from 4.9 per cent to 6.2 per cent while male unemployment rates moved from 4.2 to 4.9 per cent. The overall unemployment rate in the region was up from 4.4 per cent in 1996 to 5.2 per cent in 2006.

According to ILO, even though more people are working globally than ever before, the number of unemployed remained at an all-time high of 195.2 million last year, accounting for 6.3 per cent of the total population. The rate remained unchanged from the year 2005.

While modest gains were noticed in lifting some of the world's 1.37 billion working poor -- those working but living on less than two dollars per person per day -- out of poverty, there weren't enough decent and productive jobs to raise them and their families above the poverty line.

In terms of economic growth, South Asia's overall GDP grew at a robust 7.9 per cent (although this is down from 8.2 per cent in 2005 with further expectations of a fall again in 2007).

But this growth is not creating enough employment to absorb the expanding labour force, which has increased by 2.1 per cent annually over the last decade. This growing labour force remains South Asia's main challenge, the report said.

MORE UNI