Employment.

• Position: In developing countries

Employment

The political commitment to full employment is an important part of the framework within which divergent interest groups in developed market-economy countries have tried to promote economic progress with social justice. In countries with centrally planned economies, guaranteed employment is a basic principle--a right and duty of every citizen. In the developing world, steady remunerative work for all who wish it remains an elusive ideal, although the number of employed is increasing and has even reached a majority in some countries.

After three decades of steady growth and near full-employment, the developed countries with market economies have in the past decade experienced a rapid increase in unemployment levels. The first upward jump came in 1975. Then, beginning in 1980, the unemployment rate climbed at least one-half a percentage point each year to peak at 9 per cent in 1983--almost three times higher than 10 years earlier. Since then, the unemployment rate has come down sharply in North America, especially the United States, while continuing to rise in Western Europe.

Current unemployment levels have a high social cost. Employment, or at least prospects of it, is an important element in the individual's and family's well-being, even aside from the income derived from a job. Unemployment today has more serious consequences than in decades past, as evidenced by the increased incidence of poverty in relation to unemployment levels in a number of developed countries.

Unemployment bears particularly heavily on two age groups--the young who may never have worked and older workers who may never work again. In the developed countries, 44 per cent of the 32 million unemployed are under age 25. In most countries, the problem of youth unemployment has brought forth a variety of specific measures aimed at encouraging employers to give consideration to younger workers.

A side effect of the effort towards youth employment has been greater pressure on workers nearing retirement. Rapid change in the structure of the economy, with the need for new skills and a general emphasis on youth, have put older workers increasingly at risk of losing their jobs and being unable to find new ones. Older workers tend to be concentrated in older, declining industries and to be less mobile geographically. In many countries, "open" unemployment among older workers has been kept in check by various incentives to get them out of the labour force.

The...