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Rise in Jobless Poses Threat to Stability Worldwide
PARIS - From lawyers in Paris to factory workers in China and bodyguards in Colombia, the ranks of the jobless are swelling rapidly across the globe.
CHINA A job fair in Beijing on Feb. 7. Millions of workers across China are looking for work but finding that factories are closing. (Greg Baker/Associated Press) Worldwide job losses from the recession that started in the United States in December 2007 could hit a staggering 50 million by the end of 2009, according to the International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency. The slowdown has already claimed 3.6 million American jobs.
High unemployment rates, especially among young workers, have led to protests in countries as varied as Latvia, Chile, Greece, Bulgaria and Iceland and contributed to strikes in Britain and France.
Last month, the government of Iceland, whose economy is expected to contract 10 percent this year, collapsed and the prime minister moved up national elections after weeks of protests by Icelanders angered by soaring unemployment and rising prices.
Just last week, the new United States director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, told Congress that instability caused by the global economic crisis had become the biggest security threat facing the United States, outpacing terrorism.
"Nearly everybody has been caught by surprise at the speed in which unemployment is increasing, and are groping for a response," said Nicolas Véron, a fellow at Bruegel, a research center in Brussels that focuses on Europe's role in the global economy.
In emerging economies like those in Eastern Europe, there are fears that growing joblessness might encourage a move away from free-market, pro-Western policies, while in developed countries unemployment could bolster efforts to protect local industries at the expense of global trade.
Indeed, some European stimulus packages, as well as one passed Friday in the United States, include protections for domestic companies, increasing the likelihood of protectionist trade battles.
Protectionist measures were an intense matter of discussion as finance ministers from the Group of 7 economies met this weekend in Rome.
While the number of jobs in the United States has been falling since the end of 2007, the pace of layoffs in Europe, Asia and the developing world has caught up only recently as companies that resisted deep cuts in the past follow the lead of their American counterparts.
The International Monetary Fund expects that by the end of the year, global economic growth will reach its lowest point since the Depression, according to Charles Collyns, deputy director of the fund's research department. The fund said that growth had come to "a virtual halt," with developed economies expected to shrink by 2 percent in 2009.
"This is the worst we've had since 1929," said Laurent Wauquiez, France's employment minister. "The thing that is new is that it is global, and we are always talking about that. It is in every country, and it makes the whole difference."
In Asia, any smugness at having escaped losses on American subprime debt has been erased by growing despair over a plunge in sales among major exporters. On Thursday, Pioneer of Japan said it would abandon the flat-screen television business and cut 10,000 jobs worldwide in response to sagging demand for consumer electronics.
Millions of migrant workers in mainland China are searching for jobs but finding that factories are shutting down. Though not as large as the disturbances in Greece or the Baltics, there have been dozens of protests at individual factories in China and Indonesia where workers were laid off with little or no notice.
The breadth of the problem is also becoming apparent in Taiwan, where exports were down 42.9 percent last month, compared with a year ago, the steepest plunge in Asia.
Chang Yung-yun, a 57-year-old restaurant kitchen worker, was laid off when her employer closed in mid-November. Her son, an engineer, has been put on unpaid vacation for weeks, a tactic that has become common in Taiwan.
"The greatest fear for our people is losing jobs," Taiwan's president, Ma Ying-jeou, said in an interview.
Calls for protectionism have resonated among a fearful public. In Britain, refinery and power plant employees walked off the job last month to protest the use of workers from Italy and Portugal at a construction project on the coast. Some held up signs highlighting Prime Minister Gordon Brown's earlier promise of "British jobs for British workers."
Unemployment in Britain is expected to rise to 9.5 percent by the middle of 2010, from 6.3 percent now, according to Peter Dixon, an economist with Commerzbank in London. Germany's jobless rate could rise to 10.5 percent from 7.8 percent, he added.
In France last week, President Nicolas Sarkozy agreed to supply low-interest loans of 3 billion euros, or $3.86 billion, each to PSA Peugeot Citroën and Renault in exchange for an agreement not to lay off French workers.
To a greater extent than in past European downturns, highly trained white-collar workers are pounding the pavement, too. Naomi Runquist-Ohayon, a trademark lawyer, has been looking for work in Paris since the beginning of the year, after losing her job in December.
"This is a new experience for me," said Ms. Runquist-Ohayon, 39, a Swedish native who has lived in Paris and London and speaks fluent English, French, Swedish and Italian. "In London, I never had to really look. Recruiters or headhunters would call me or I would call them. It's not so easy now."
Half a world away in Colombia, Jaime Galeano, 40, is in a similar predicament. As a bodyguard in a country notorious for drug-related violence and kidnappings, Mr. Galeano thought his profession was immune until he lost his job last year.
"The conditions for finding a job are terrible," he said. What is more, his age is now an impediment, with a ministry informing him that only applicants under the age of 32 would be considered for new positions.
"After turning 35, a person is worth nothing," Mr. Galeano said.
Even India, whose startling rise to the forefront of the global economy was portrayed in the hit movie "Slumdog Millionaire," has hit a wall. About 500,000 people lost jobs between October and December 2008, according to one recent analysis.
In New Delhi, Tarun Lamba lost the first real job he ever had about a month ago, when he was laid off as a sales manager. Mr. Lamba, 24, said he knew bad news was coming because it had been weeks since he had written a truck loan. If he has to, he said, he could join his father's business, selling clothes. But he hopes it will not come to that.
"The cycle has to keep running," he said. "We had a boom period one year ago, now we are in a recession, and after some time the boom will come again."
Many newer workers, especially those in countries that moved from communism to capitalism in the 1990s, have known only boom times since then. For them, the shift is especially jarring, a main reason for the violence that exploded recently in countries like Latvia, a former Soviet republic.
"For the young generation, aged 20 to 24, this is the first time we've had this," said Valdis Zatlers, Latvia's president.
The ripples from the slowdown in Europe, North America and Asia are also being felt in Africa as migrant workers abroad lose their jobs and find themselves unable to send money home.
Since his last temporary job as a metalworker in Paris ended three months ago, Ignace Abdul has halted the monthly 200 euro payments he had been sending to his wife and three children back in Senegal. "Between 2004 and 2008, I worked nonstop," Mr. Abdul, 30, said in an interview in a bleak Paris unemployment office. "Right now, there is nothing."
Reporting was contributed by Keith Bradsher from Taipei, Taiwan; Heather Timmons from New Delhi; Simon Romero and Jenny Carolina González from Bogota, Colombia; and Maïa de la Baume from Paris.
12 Comments so far
Show All"The conditions for finding a job are terrible," he said. What is more, his age is now an impediment, with a ministry informing him that only applicants under the age of 32 would be considered for new positions......After turning 35, a person is worth nothing," Mr. Galeano said."
That's true for almost every profession today; and if you have a college education to go along with your antiquity, it seems your chances of getting a job get even worse.
The "Masters of the Universe" have done one heck-of-a-job in creating a global depression.
"That's true for almost every profession today; and if you have a college education to go along with your antiquity, it seems your chances of getting a job get even worse."
Bingo, that's me.
"The 'Masters of the Universe' have done one heck-of-a-job in creating a global depression."
Yes, and they are being rewarded quite handsomely for their efforts I must add.
Revolution anyone?
And the only cure for all this would be creating good, continuing jobs, which our government has made no move to do yet...
"Gail February 15th, 2009 10:02 am
"The conditions for finding a job are terrible," he said. What is more, his age is now an impediment, with a ministry informing him that only applicants under the age of 32 would be considered for new positions......After turning 35, a person is worth nothing," Mr. Galeano said."
That's true for almost every profession today; and if you have a college education to go along with your antiquity, it seems your chances of getting a job get even worse."
YES; I've been learning both aspects, the age and the higher education factors, for around ten years now; it wouldn't have been bad at all if I had been able to relocate to an area with enough jobs with the computer experience I had, but knowing no one there and having family with a spare bedroom I moved to there, and the job market for my computer experience was and has always remained pitiful here. Most jobs here require no more than a high school ed., and many employers seeking only this little ed. don't want to even interview someone like myself. I understand some of their reasons and can't really fault them, but it gets to be very crushing when you have plenty of proven work experience and are just deemed to be a risk to hire due to your higher ed. and professional experience. Being between a rock and a hard place gets to be very burdensome over time, and it's been many years for me now. Third-worldism North America is what I've known for ten years now.
It's good to see that some people are aware of what having higher ed. can be like when it is a block to jobs or income.
=================
Anyway, the following is not long and is an informative article on the global job losses, and more on the U.S. and global economies.
"US jobless benefit rolls hit record high",
by Barry Grey, wsws.org, Feb 13 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12297
I hear you Mike. Many of us are experiencing the same thing and it continues to look grim for some time to come. Hang in there!
What's going to happen when the younger generations are saddled with massive college loans and can't find employment to pay them back?
It ain't lookin good!
Hi Mike, thanks for your post. Been there, done that, to use a shopworn vernacular. My college education was a hindrance rather than a benefit. I've lost count on how many times I was told that I was over qualified. Being over 40 doesn't help either. No employer will give me the time of day. But these employers amaze me. They really have it in their heads that people will stay with them for the rest of their lives in their little McJob dead end world. I also want to say that the those that run the many "human resources" departments don't even act human.
Many universities in the US are nothing more than diploma mills at the undergraduate level.They are borderline scam operations.I have a BA only from the Univ. of Wisconsin and 80% of the courses were a waste of time and money.Thirty eight years later,I still wish that I had pursued a trade and done whatever independent reading that had appealed.These universities of course become entwined and beholden to the MIC and the taxpayers get squeezed from all sides.
Perhaps the UW here is worse than many other state's universities,here only the athletic department and the business school get full-fledged support.Despite Donna Shalala's proclamation years ago of "diversity" the minority and poor percentage of students has barely budged.
Maybe our economic crisis will also change corporate thinking along this level-a person without a college degree should never be automatically excluded from entry level jobs.I had an experience fresh out of college that baffles me to this day.When I was promoted from my first slot to the sales field,my supervisor called me into his office to say goodbye.He informed me that he could envision the day soon when anyone hired for my previous job would have a masters degree.The job?-in the order department fielding questions from customers and staff.A job that a sharp high school grad would be well suited for.
After re-reading this I realize that perhaps the pendulum has swung in a different direction now,but I believe that much of the funding for meaningful education is hoarded for the already well-to-do and up to the doctorate level,much of our system is pure BS.
We need to stop thinking in terms of "jobs" and do as the ancient Chinese (and likely others, too) did, which is to trade hours worked for one's livelihood. No middleman such as the corporation was needed - the village hours-keeper kept track of everyone's worked hours and who owed whom hours of work.
We can put people to work building energy-efficient,low-income housing using recycled materials from torn-down inefficient houses, also building raised garden beds where they grow their own food and some to spare for others, and other needed community projects - - and for this labor they get to live in the housing and eat the food, thereby earning their necessities DIRECTLY, instead of begging for a "job" where they get a bit of money and then try to live on that money.
Such housing could constitute a community where recycled materials are fixed up and made into reusable products, and so on.
I'm writing it up, although that's the gist of it, and I'm going to see if local politicians here in Maine will go with it. We shall see.
-------Plant a garden, put windows on South side, store food for winter, install composting toilet, etc...we haven't much time to get ready.
In olden times, in circumstances like these, the peasants would display the heads of the rich on pikes.
Call me a traditionalist.
The US should definitely start economizing where it can. How much could be saved by outsourcing the jobs of CEOs at companies in the S&P 500?
Alan MacDonald
It is amazing that the Times put this on the front page --- perhaps the decision has already been made, by the ruling-elite, to precipitate a conflict?
My comments to them in any case:
This front page/center story, as well as Ret. Adm. Blair's quieter comments last week as the new 'national director of intelligence' briefing Congress on the greatest threat to security being economic oppression (and not Bush's specious GWOT) comes as no surprise to me --- nor any informed student of political economics, empire, and media deceit.
We have been, for the past several decades, living in a false reality --- a virtual 'Alice in Wonderland' world --- in which the ruling-elite 'corporate financial empire' which fully controls our country behind the facade of its two-party, "Vichy' sham of democracy has effectively looted our commonwealth and destroyed our political and physical environment, while funneling vast riches up-ward and massive income & wealth inequality downward.
One may recall no less an expert than American Nobel laureate in economics George Akerlof stating in 2001 of the Bush administration, "This is not normal government policy, but a form of looting."
Now, the bank alarm is ringing --- and the blood ringing out of our common economy is adding to the sound of that ringing alarm, and finally registering our awareness of that looting.
Adm. Blair humorously ended his Congressional testimony by telling one inane and vacuous senator, “I won’t be turning satellites to look at G.D.P. accounts”. But here Blair himself is playing the dunce, because the highest economic correlation to 'civil unrest', as the CIA well knows and publishes in their 'country casebook' is not gross GDP, nor GDP per capita, nor even "jobs" as the Times would have us believe, but rather the GINI Coefficient of Income INEQUALITY. As the CIA soberly warns: Countries with GINI indexes of over 0.45 face dangers of "civil unrest".
[For those who may not be aware, the GINI index of the US (0.48 and climbing fast) is 'off the charts' in comparison to all other advanced democracies (like Europe and Japan --- which range from 0.23 to 0.31), and ranks as high or higher than South American 'banana republics', African dictatorships, and Middle Eastern royal family oil monarchies. In fact, this CIA economic indicator of ‘country trouble’ for the US is close to the 0.53 of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe.]
Yes, Adm. Blair we have found the enemy, and it is not us, but our hidden 'Vichy' Empire of corporate financial oppressors --- just as it was with the more visible royal tyranny of the British Empire in 1775.
So, Admiral Blair, if you wanted to be a real and patriotic alarmist in Congress (and, more importantly, to the American people) similar to the alarm that Paul Revere carried on his important ride, perhaps you should have ended your briefing with the more useful, generalized, and important call out to your fellow patriots, "The Empire is coming. The Empire is coming. To arms minute-men --- the Empire is here!"
But do not despair, Adm. Blair, for despite your failure to clearly voice this alarm directly to the American people, --- they already have the message, they know, and minute by minute they are inexorably moving forward to rectify the problem.
You may not level with us, and Congress may not level with us, and the MSM will certainly not level with us, and even Obama may not level with us, but we are aware of the EMPIRE-problem, we are aware of the EMPIRE-pathology, we are aware of the EMPIRE-deceit, and every minute (like minute-men) we are moving to solve it with democracy.
You can always join the military. We need all the cannon fodder we can get. Only the survivors get benefits.
"amacd February 15th, 2009 10:32 pm
...
One may recall no less an expert than American Nobel laureate in economics George Akerlof stating in 2001 of the Bush administration, "This is not normal government policy, but a form of looting.""
If Akerlof didn't feel the same way about the preceding presidential administrations in the U.S., then Akerlof was evidently biased and speaking a half-truth. The following important set of summarised history illustrates.
"A Brief History of U.S. Interventions: 1945 to the Present",
by William Blum, Z Mag., Jun 1999
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/US_Interventions_WBlumZ.html
amacd:
"Now, the bank alarm is ringing --- and the blood ringing out of our common economy is adding to the sound of that ringing alarm, and finally registering our awareness of that looting."
Yes, and the process has been progressing for decades and many U.S. citizens, and non-citizen but legal residents who had or rather have equal labor or employment rights as or with citizens, were seriously or severely affected during the 1990s, after those who were seriously affected during the 1980s. Meanwhile, the U.S. population generally remained silent, albeit probably many were ignorant of the "works" that were happening and perhaps were therefore less capable of foreseeing what was ahead for many others.
What's been happening, like what we have today, was basically foreseeable (not every detail, but enough) if we were sensitive to what was already happening to others and the injustices in all of this. After all, what had already happened and was continuing to happen, while news media didn't cover this, or certainly didn't report truth anyway, was due to a lot of greed of corporatist-fascist capitalists who were powerfully influential and got the govt to do as they wished; and such people are extremely difficult to satisfy. They'll prey ... to the last drops ... of blood that they can get. And they'll have police state, or police and military state (?), govt for enforcement if society gets "out of hand" too much.
amacd on GINI:
amacd is apparently right about "GINI Coefficient of Income INEQUALITY" being the critical factor when wanting to be able to foresee "civil unrest", but loss of jobs, when this is happening very much, as happened during the 1990s to (f.e.) U.S. high-tech. professionals who were replaced in large numbers nationally with imported temps does lead to "income inequality", II, of a certainly not normal kind; it's not normal, it's due to predatory business practices, greed, etcetera. Those of us who were capable of successfully finding substitute jobs for incomes would then become contented and not really suffer any II, but not everyone was lucky and the whole wave of this importation of unnecessary and unjustifiable "temp." workers was symptomatic of a society running on rogue or corrupt economics. And the or this "movement" will come to cancerously affect other members and sectors of the society.
Not always but nevertheless there sometimes is a serious relationship between joblessness and II, iow; in a society like the so-called "developed" ones anyway. Joblessness is definitely relevant when speaking of the "haves" vs the "have-nots", which in turn and clearly speaks of II's.
Also, when we learn of civil unrest happening it's not because we first learn of II being involved; when it's income related, then we usually hear and read of joblessness and serious lack of fairness on the part of employers and govt. As for what the CIA uses for foreseeing unrest, this isn't very relevant for most of us, given we're not usually provided with the necessary details or data, and the CIA monitors for the unrest ... not for honourable purposes! See the above history compiled by William Blum.
GINI's important, but joblessness and the reasons for it are also important to carefully consider. If analysis proves relevance, then it is relevant; else drop the consideration, instead of pointlessly maintaining it.
GDP? Fraud!
The GDP is a grotesque misrepresentation of reality if what people like Paul Craig Roberts, f.e., write about this is true, and I believe they're right. If recalling correctly, then there's something of a "phantom" or at least fake, or fraudulent (actually fraudulent it really is), nature in what's reported for GDP. Part of the problem is the exclusion of factors like mentioned above, that is, the massive waves of importing unjustifiable numbers of foreign workers who really are only or mostly used to replace domestic workers, citizens and residents, that is, and then the massiveness of the offshoring of jobs. These are two, among possibly more, factors that aren't included in the calculation of GDP, so it's a very, very false figure that's presented to us by the govt.