In 2024, the number of unemployed people in the world will increase by 2 million people, which will lead to an increase in the unemployment rate to 5.2% from 5.1% in 2023, the International Labor Organization (ILO) predicted in the report “Employment Prospects and social sphere in the world.”
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Increasing unemployment
The organization mainly attributes this to the increase in the number of unemployed in countries with developed economies.
“We predict a slight decrease indicators in labor markets, partly due to slowing growth around the world,” Richard Samans, director of the ILO’s research department, told Reuters.
The report notes that after a short growth spurt as countries recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic, aggregate labor productivity growth quickly returned to the low rates observed during the previous decade.
“During periods of slow productivity growth, real disposable income and real wages are often vulnerable to sudden price shocks,” the document says.
At the same time, the report states that employment growth in upper-middle-income countries is expected to increase slightly over the next two years.
Read: UN predicts slowdown in global economic growth in 2024
“The situation is particularly worrying in high-income countries, where employment growth will turn negative in 2024 and only modest improvements are expected in 2025,” the document says. In low- and lower-middle-income countries, employment growth will remain robust, the ILO predicts.
At the same time, the number of Americans claiming unemployment benefits for the first time fell by 18,000 in the last week of December, to 202,000 seasonally adjusted.
At the same time, economists polled by Reuters on average predicted 216,000 applications for this period. The agency clarified that the unemployment rate in the United States remained below 4%. Reuters explained this by the fact that companies are in no hurry to hire after difficulties in finding labor due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
