Close to 5 million more unemployed worldwide in 2008 - Economic turbulence, largely due to credit market turmoil and rising oil prices, could spur an increase in global unemployment by an estimated 5 million people in 2008, the International Labour Office (ILO) said today in its annual Global Employment Trends report (GET). The new projection for 2008 is in contrast to 2007, a watershed year in which sound global GDP growth - of 5.2% - led to a “stabilization” of global labour markets with more people in work, a net increase of 45 million new jobs and only a slight increase in the number of people unemployed, to a total of 189.9 million people worldwide. Overall, 61.7 per cent of the global population of working age - or an estimated 3 billion people - were employed in 2007. The global unemployment rate remained virtually constant at 6 per cent. 2008 is looking like one of contrasts and uncertainty. The reduction in growth in developed economies has so far been “compensated for in the rest of the world”, especially in Asia, where economic and job growth has remained strong. The ILO estimates that the expected slow down in growth this year could bring the global unemployment rate to 6.1 per cent. There are also a lot of poor and vulnerable workers who do not have decent working conditions. According to the ILO, five out of 10 people in the world are in vulnerable employment, either contributing family workers or own-account workers with a higher risk of being unprotected. An estimated 487 million workers - or 16.4 per cent of all workers - still don't earn enough to lift themselves and their families above the US$1 per person, per day poverty line while 1.3 billion workers - 43.5 per cent - still live below the US$2 per day threshold. The report also underlined that the service sector continued to grow during 2007, further surpassing agriculture as the world's most prevalent source of employment. The service sector now provides 42.7 per cent of the world's jobs, compared to agriculture which provides 34.9 per cent. The industrial sector, which had seen a slight downward trend between 1997 and 2003, has continued a rather slow upward trend in recent years, representing 22.4 per cent of global jobs. - Regional trends: the ILO observed that the Middle East and North Africa still had the highest unemployment rates at 11.8 and 10.9 per cent respectively in 2007, followed by Latin America & the Caribbean, Central & South Eastern Europe (non EU) & the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) at 8.5 per cent. The situation in the Developed Economies & European Union (EU) seemed to be stagnating, the ILO report said, with job growth at its lowest in the last five years and unemployment up by 600,000 over 2006. South Asia was the leader in jobs growth during 2007, contributing 28 per cent of the nearly 45 million jobs created during the year worldwide. At the same time, the region has the highest share of vulnerable employment. In terms of vulnerable employment as a share of total employment, South Asia, with a rate of 77.2 per cent, was followed by sub-Saharan Africa at 72.9 per cent, South-East Asia & the Pacific at 59.4 per cent, East Asia at 55.7 per cent, Latin America & the Caribbean at 33.2 per cent, the Middle East at 32.2 per cent and North Africa at 30.7 per cent. The ILO said the estimated share of East Asian workers living with their families below the US$2 per day poverty line dropped to 35.6 per cent today from 59.1 per cent 10 years ago, while the percentage living below US$1 per day had decreased to 8.7 per cent from 18.8 per cent over the same period. Sub-Saharan Africa had by far the largest share of working poor - people who are in work but unable to lift themselves out of poverty - and the gap with other regions continued to increase. Over half of those employed still do not earn enough to lift themselves and their families above the US$1 dollar per day poverty line, the ILO said, adding that more than eight out of 10 workers were living below the US$2 per day threshold. The Middle East saw a considerable increase in the employment-to-population ratio - the share of people of working age who were employed increased from 46 per cent in 1997 to 50.1 per cent in 2007. In North Africa, where productivity levels increased by more than 16 per cent in the last 10 years, extreme working poverty is now almost eradicated at 1.6 per cent of the employed population. Latin America & the Caribbean was the only region where vulnerable employment has increased - from 31.4 to 33.2 per cent of total employment over the last ten years. Information: (communication@ilo.org). (I.L.)