United Nations Radio

December 2009
>
S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31

Connect

Services

 7 December 2009
Print Sound bites Share

ILO warns against premature "exit" from economic support measures

07/12/2009

A new report from the International Labour Organization (ILO) is warning against an "early exit" from support measures implemented by countries in the wake of the global economic crisis.

jobs recovery

jobs recovery

The World of Work 2009, released on Monday, says such moves could affect jobs recovery for years, in addition to aggravating social hardships created by the crisis.

Raymond Torres is Director of the ILO's International Institute for Labour Studies.

"What has happened is that in many enterprises, jobs have been kept, employment has been retained. And compared to earlier crises, in fact there have been less lay-offs, compared to earlier crises. So, if kind of stimulus measures were phased out to quickly, these people would be at risk of losing their jobs immediately."

The report looks at data from 51 countries. It finds that an estimated five million workers in these countries could lose their jobs if governments withdraw their support, or economic recovery is not strong enough.

It also notes that revenues derived from imposing a price on carbon dioxide emissions, which is on the table at the Copenhagen climate change conference, could help create more than 14 million new jobs globally by 2014.

Dianne Penn, UN Radio.

(duration: 1'21")

Sound bites

Raymond Torres Cut 1

"What has happened is that in many enterprises, jobs have been kept, employment has been retained. And compared to earlier crises, in fact there have been less lay-offs, compared to earlier crises. So, if kind of stimulus measures were phased out to quickly, these people would be at risk of losing their jobs immediately."
Duration: 00:00:20

Raymond Torres Cut 2

"In developing countries, of course, there is a risk of prolonged informality: people shifting from formal good jobs to informal precarious jobs. This is happening already."
Duration: 00:00:11

Raymond Torres Cut 3

"The report presents figures for long-term unemployment and also for participation rates, and notes that in the majority of developed countries, participation rates have already starting to decline. So that means that people are dropping out of the labour market. If you look at the US unemployment figures for example, we welcome the fact that the unemployment rate declined But there has been much less comment on the fact that at the same time, almost 100,000 dropped out of the US labour market. So in fact, the drop in unemployment is to some extent due to the fact that some people no longer participate in the labour market. This is not good news."
Duration: 00:00:41