World employment and social outlook: Trends 2016

The World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2016 provides a global overview of recent trends in employment, unemployment and labour force participation as well as different dimensions of job quality such as vulnerable employment and working poverty. The report covers all countries in the world and describes patterns in the main regions and sectors. It also presents projections for the period 2015–17 for employment and unemployment. A key finding is that the expansion of the world economy has been too weak to close the significant employment and social gaps that have emerged since the beginning of the global crisis in 2008. Around 197 million people were unemployed in the world in 2015, and the projections are for a further increase in global unemployment by more than 3 million people over the next two years. Since 2007, more than 76 million jobs have been lost and this jobs gap is set to widen further mainly due to a continuous decline in the labour force in developed countries and rising unemployment in emerging economies.