32 TRADE & FINANCE
Thank you for the floor , Minister Abetz , and thank you for the opportunity to present the joint work that the ILO , OECD and World Bank have been undertaking together over the course of this year at your request and in response to the call by G20 Leaders last year for each G20 country to develop growth strategies and employment action plans .
It won ’ t come as a big surprise to any of the Ministers here that despite the efforts made , current employment challenges remain substantial for all G20 countries .
ILO Director General ’ s address on G20 labour markets
The Director-General of the ILO , Guy Ryder , joined the G20 Labour and Employment Ministerial Meeting held in Melbourne in September 2014 , during which the ILO presented a number of reports on employment issues that have been prepared to inform the Ministerial discussions
Looking at the slide ( below ), you can see that large employment gaps opened as a result of the financial crisis that broke in 2007 and remain significant in most G20 countries .
Jobs gaps in G20 compared to pre-2007 trend
Our projections of the future trend , based on IMF growth projections , is that the gaps will remain large in advanced G20 countries at least to 2018 and indeed may even widen .
That said , in the last 12 months , the majority of the G20 countries have witnessed a modest reduction in the unemployment rate . These positive developments were largely due to welcome net job creation , especially in the United States , but in some cases they resulted at least in part from declines in the labour force participation rate .
This has to be noted while recalling that the rate of youth unemployment declined in many countries but still remains at historically high levels in others .
In the emerging G20 countries , jobs gaps are not as wide as an industrialized countries but the prospect of closing the gaps in the next five years is not very promising under current growth trends .
Jobs gaps in G20 compared to pre-2007 trend