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March 12, 2009
LAST month America’s unemployment rate climbed to 8.1%, the highest in a quarter of a century. For those newly out of a job, the chances of finding another soon are the worst since records began 50 years ago. In China 20m migrant workers (maybe 3% of the labour force) have been laid off. Cambodia’s textile industry, its main source of exports, has cut one worker in ten. In Spain the building bust has pushed the jobless rate up by two-thirds in a year, to 14.8% in January. And in Japan, where official unemployment used to be all but unknown, tens of thousands of people on temporary contracts are losing not just their jobs but also the housing provided by their employers.
The next phase of the world’s economic downturn is taking shape: a global jobs crisis. Its contours are only just becoming clear, but the severity, breadth and likely length of the recession, together with changes in the structure of labour markets in both rich and emerging economies, suggest the world is about to undergo its biggest increase in unemployment for decades.
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