While the global unemployment rate is stabilising, vulnerable employment is on the rise, according to a new report – which also reveals the informal sector continues to undermine the prospects for reducing working poverty, particularly in Asia.
According to the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) ‘World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2018’ report, the global unemployment rate is expected to stabilise at around 5.5% – a rate below pre-crisis levels – over the next couple of years. However, the significant progress achieved in the past in reducing vulnerable employment has essentially stalled since 2012, the report suggests.
“Even though global unemployment has stabilised, decent work deficits remain widespread: the global economy is still not creating enough jobs,” says ILO director-general Guy Ryder.
Almost 1.4bn workers globally were estimated to have been in vulnerable employment in 2017 – the majority live in Asia – and an additional 35m are expected to join them by 2019.
According to the ILO, vulnerable employment is often characterised by inadequate earnings, low productivity and difficult conditions of work that undermine workers’ fundamental rights. It is defined as the sum of the employment status groups of own account workers and contributing family workers. These workers are more likely to be informally employed and lack a ‘voice’ through effective representation by trade unions.
The vast majority of informal workers are unregulated in terms of salaries and it brings a greater risk of exploitation.
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By GlobalDataSouthern Asia, due to its rapid labour force growth, is expected to account for close to 90% of the total employment growth in Asia and the Pacific in 2018. Yet unemployment will increase from 18.3m in 2017 to 18.9m in 2019, and the rate of vulnerable employment will remain relatively unchanged at 72% of workers to 2019.
The region includes the garment and textile producing countries of India and Bangladesh. According to The World Bank, nine out of ten Bangladeshis work in the informal sector, often in poor working conditions.
In Central and Western Asia, the relatively strong rebound in economic growth is only partially translating into falling unemployment. The regional unemployment rate is expected to remain at around 8.6% throughout 2018 and 2019. Vulnerable employment remains persistently high, affecting more than 30% of workers in 2017, but it is estimated to slightly decline over 2018 and 2019 (0.6 percentage points).
Other regions in Asia, however, are faring far better. The share of vulnerable employment in total employment in South-Eastern Asia and the Pacific – which includes Cambodia, Indonesia, Singapore and Australia – is expected to drop to 46.1% in 2018 from 46.2% last year and to 46% by 2019. The figure is estimated to drop to 31% by 2019 for Eastern Asia – China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan – from 31.2% in 2017, but this is mainly a result of the shrinking workforce in China.
More positively, the report notes that the incidence of working poverty is expected to continue on its downward trend in emerging economies where the number of people in extreme working poverty will drop to 166.4m in 2019 from 186.8m in 2017.
“Additional efforts need to be put in place to improve the quality of work for jobholders and to ensure that the gains of growth are shared equitably,” says Ryder.
