TRADE & FINANCE 33
And those overall growth trends do not give much cause for optimism at the moment. Despite a modest economic recovery in 2013-4, economic growth is expected to remain below trend over the foreseeable future. The G20 jobs gap in 2012 was about 55 million. The ILO estimates that the gap will continue to widen until 2018, reaching 63 million that year.
“ Jobless growth”
Africa have seen further increases in already high long-term unemployment rates. However, some declines were recorded in Brazil and the Russian Federation and to a lesser extent Turkey and, although from a high base, also in Germany.
The median value of long-term unemployment as a share of total unemployment had risen to 30.2 per cent by the first quarter of 2014, up from 24.6 per cent at the end of 2007. In several countries, the challenge of long-term unemployment, and unemployment more generally, is particularly acute among youth.
The next slide addresses one element of the quality of employment, that is the issue of informality.
Informal employment is high in emerging economies
Furthermore, the employment intensity of growth has also been weakened in many countries. This figure shows that even very high growth rates in China, India and Indonesia have not produced comparable growth in employment.
Except for Turkey, Mexico and Germany, all of the other G20 countries that did grow saw lower rates of job growth than economic growth.
In addition to the sheer size of the jobs gap, then, there are clearly specific employment problems facing G20 economies.
Long-term unemployment has grown in many countries
1. Corresponds only to persons employed in the informal sector 2. Six cities only
In a number of emerging G20 economies, the biggest challenge lies in moving the labour force out of low productivity, low wage informal employment and underemployment. This slide shows, disaggregated by gender, the high levels of informality in many emerging G20 countries. In addition, we have observed an emergence of informal working relationships even in the formal sector in some advanced G20 economies.
Coinciding with the sizeable jobs gap we looked at is a deterioration in job quality in a number of G20 countries, and here we look at the behaviour of real wage rates. Real wages have stagnated across many advanced G20 economies and even fallen in some.
Weak economic recovery has led to weak wage growth, especially in advanced economies
* Selected urban areas. Q3 2007-Q3 2013 for the Russian Federation; and Q1 2008-Q1 2014 for South Africa
In over half of the G20, the share of long-term unemployed has increased as a share of total unemployment, in some cases dramatically. These unemployed face daunting re-employment odds.
Particularly sharp increases took place in Spain as well as in the United States, and countries such as Italy and South