Creating six hundred million jobs should be the world’s number one priority

Since the start of the global economic crisis some 27 million more people are unemployed. Today one in three workers world wide are either unemployed or living in poverty. A new UN report believes if the world is to maintain economic growth nations are going to have to find 600 million more jobs.

The global demand for jobs is expanding fast, over the next decade 200 million more people are going to be competing in the jobs market (me being one of them). Most will be in developing countries, but if the latest figures are anything to go by, we could see the number of unemployed in Europe hit 73 million in the not too distant future.

So where are these jobs going to come from? America might take on some of the burden. Since the hight of the financial crisis employment has risen by 2.5 per cent especially for those aged over 25.

India’s economy has also fared well during the crisis. The nation has in fact seen an increase in the rate of growth since 2009. This suggests that there is more room for job creation on the subcontinent. However, unemployment has consistently floated around 9.4 per cent.

There are no definitive figures for unemployment in Africa, but many think the situation is improving. Indeed Oxfam has recently become so conscious of its use of the ‘starving African child’ motif that it has hired professional marketers to help represent Africa in a fairer light. Of course, this is not true for all of Africa as the UN report suggests, 900 million people subsist on nothing more than $2 a day.