No sustainable recovery without more and better jobs

As the G20 summit enters its second day, ILO Director-General Guy Ryder urged G20 leaders to focus on policies that drive growth through more and better jobs.

“We need policies that both boost global demand and address supply constraints, for example, skills and vocational training, support to small and medium entreprises, investment in infrastructure”, said Ryder. “Unless we have not only growth, but growth that actually creates more and better jobs and higher household incomes, we could see more downward revisions of growth forecasts.”

The ILO Chief yesterday participated in the summit’s opening session which focused on strengthening growth and job creation.

A G20 jobs gap of about 54 million has opened up since 2007 and unless there is a marked improvement in current growth trends, the gap could widen further.

Ryder said that the ILO welcomes the G20 ambition to lift total G20 GDP by 2 per cent by 2018 but pointed out that even if this target is achieved it may do no more than stop the jobs gap from widening further and will hardly dent the existing jobless figures.

But this fragile situation can be tackled with a G20 strategy that puts job creation and measures to improve the quality of employmen

t at the centre of recovery efforts. A major boost to infrastructure investment coupled with well-designed employment, wage and social protection policies can reverse the current self-reinforcing cycle of slow growth, weak job creation, low wage growth and low investment.

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Source & Copyright: ILO