Could today's jobs crisis end up scarring the hopes of an entire generation? Even in the best of times, many young people have a hard time getting a foothold in the labour market, with youth unemployment often two to three times higher than for adults. In recessions, finding work gets tougher still. Moreover, many of those young people who have work are on short-term contracts and commonly find themselves first in line when it comes to lay offs-some 35% of workers aged 15-24 in the OECD area held temporary contracts in 2008. In this recession, there is extra cause for concern.

Ministers responsible for employment from around the world gathered at the OECD on 28-29 September to discuss the jobs crisis. In our eighth OECD Observer ministers' roundtable, we ask six representatives, from Canada (co-Chair), Italy (co-Chair), Sweden (vice-Chair), France, New Zealand, and Chile, which is a candidate for OECD accession: What new policy actions are you taking to improve the jobs situation in your country?

Unemployment is rising to unprecedented high levels. There are several good policies governments can deploy to tackle it, but there are risks to avoid too.

With the crisis and sharp rise in unemployment, you might think anyone with a job these days should consider themselves lucky. Well, that depends.

In most OECD countries, unemployment protection systems don't provide adequate social security during a severe economic crisis and periods of high and persisting unemployment. Not only that, benefits can even run out within much less than a year and often before unemployed workers can find new jobs. Also, income support in many countries barely ever covers more than half a worker's previous salary, and sometimes much less.

Thanks to prompt and significant government responses to the crisis, many economies are experiencing initial signs of recovery. However, there is still much uncertainty concerning what lies ahead and unemployment is still rising in many countries. The OECD unemployment rate reached a post-war high of 8.5% in July 2009, with an OECD estimated 15 million extra out of work since the start of the crisis. In contrast, unemployment across the OECD was at a 25-year low of 5.6% in 2007.

"Being unemployed is frustrating, demeaning and, at this point, frightening." Anyone who has any doubt about the devastating effects unemployment can have will learn a lot from statements such as this one, captured in a recent survey undertaken by the John. J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University in the US.

As G20 leaders and OECD employment ministers turn their focus to solving the unemployment crisis that has gripped the world economy, they should spare more than just a thought for the particular plight of developing countries. Global unemployment has increased sharply, by 39 million workers, to judge by ILO central projections for 2009. But particularly for developing countries, unemployment is just one dimension of the challenge. Developing countries are also characterised by large numbers of informal workers who have no social or legal protection, and extremely low pay. They, their families and the wider communities to which they belong are exposed to all sorts of health and safety risks too.

One of the most widely heard accusations against immigrants is that they take jobs from locals, usually-it's claimed-because they are willing to work for less. How true are such claims, and do immigrants really harm the job prospects of natives?

Jobs crisis or no, it's best to invest in education. As this year's edition of Education at a Glance shows, men and women who have university-level degrees earn far more over the course of a lifetime than those who don't. In fact, men with higher education in Italy and the US can earn over US$300,000 more than their counterparts who do not have a university degree. Rewards tend to be lower for women, with Korea and Spain the exceptions.

When the OECD was mandated to develop a Green Growth Strategy this June, ministers specifically referred to the "green jobs" that such a strategy would support. But what exactly are "green jobs"?

Respond to the needs of the newly unemployed while continuing to engage with people who are disadvantaged within the labour market: this is the major challenge facing employment ministers today.

The main victims of severe economic downturns tend to be workers and their families, so governments are rightly stepping in to help job losers weather the storm. But while the severity of the unfolding jobs crisis may require extraordinary policy responses, how can governments avoid the wrong ones?

To be useful in helping countries to move out of the crisis, it is necessary for the OECD to look at its own history as an organisation and draw the right lessons for the future.

The financial and economic crisis has already put millions of people out of work in the OECD area alone, and the unemployment figures are going to get far worse. What can governments do to ease the suffering? 

Where there's money, there's also time for relaxing.

Productivity had been plummeting in OECD economies for a few years before the advent of the financial crisis.

In times of crisis, people don't look just to their governments to help them out, they look to each other. Giving money and time to non-profit groups working in health, education, social services and the arts helps others while making those who contribute feel good about themselves.

“The Chinese government rightly advocates firm opposition to trade and investment protectionism, as emphatically stated by Premier Wen Jiabao on several occasions in the past few weeks. As it did a decade ago during the Asian crisis, China has set itself firmly against inward retrenchment in the face of economic downturn. We celebrate this commitment at OECD.

The OECD and IMF forecasts for 2009 suggest that for the first time since the 1930s GDP will fall in the industrialised economies that make up the OECD. Yet even these forecasts are based on relatively optimistic assumptions that the financial markets begin to stabilise in the months ahead and that there are not other major “shoes to drop” in terms of negative financial shocks.

The credit crunch could usher in a new paradigm of stewardship for pension fund trustees and the dawn of a more accountable capitalism.

The developing world needs millions of trained health workers immediately just to provide the most basic healthcare, yet doctors are leaving poor countries to go to richer ones.

The effect multinationals have on wages and working conditions can be positive, but there are conditions to bear in mind, not least for policymakers wishing to attract foreign direct investment.

While OECD countries compete to attract high-skilled immigrants, the 2008 International Migration Outlook finds that employers increasingly rely on immigrants for low-skilled work. Just a fifth on average of the low-educated workforce in 21 OECD countries in the report is foreign-born, whereas the EU25 average is 14.1%.

Long ago I gave up trying to break through the so-called “glass ceiling” that has kept women like me out of higher management. Instead I decided to create new enterprises in which management could be reinvented by women. On 8 March 2005, I launched a business incubator devoted exclusively to projects by female entrepreneurs.

Just how significant is international migration in the light of other globalisation developments? One obvious starting point for answering the question is to ask how many of the current world population of 6.7 billion people are international migrants, defined as persons living outside their country of birth.

The gloomy image that has for so long hung over the world’s largest continent may at last be lifting.
Conflict and disease remain a bane, and there are challenges in areas like governance and transport, but as we reported in our last issue (No 255, May 2006), the OECD Development Centre’s latest African Economic Outlook is upbeat about future economic growth there.

Striking a balance between going to work and raising children is not just a concern for families. Getting the balance wrong reduces birth rates, labour supply and gender equity, and can even harm child development. It puts the shape of society in the future in question.

Europeans, particularly women, generally work fewer hours than their US counterparts. How does this difference help explain the transatlantic gap in incomes?

You rightly point out that “the supply of medical staff reflects global movements of labour” (No 262, Databank, July 2007). But many of us might disagree with your upbeat headline: “Healthy immigration”. In a report published in 2005, the Royal African Society argues that while recruitment of African medical professionals has shored up western health services, it has left the health sector in sending countries facing permanent crisis or even complete collapse.

Both the size and the relative incidence or frequency of the foreign-born population have increased in all OECD countries since 1995. So while there have been large increases in traditional migration countries such as the US and New Zealand, there have also been sharp rises in Denmark, Korea, Ireland, Italy, Norway and Spain, where inward migration has recently taken off.

Work and family constraints can lead to too few children and too little employment, affecting quality of life and economic performance. Yet many parents would like to go out to work more, while others would like to spend more time raising their children. What can policymakers do to help parents achieve a better work/family balance? The OECD’s Babies and Bosses series offers some lessons.

There are roughly 45 million disabled people living in Europe, but how do they and elderly people like to get around? They would call a taxi. The combination of the personal service that taxis offer, their wide availability and door-to-door operations enable them to respond particularly well to this population’s special travel needs. Although several countries have made progress in improving the accessibility of taxi services, much remains to be done.

The supply of medical staff also reflects global movements of labour. Indeed, there were some 1.3 million foreign born health professionals–nurses, doctors, pharmacists, dentists, etc.–living in OECD countries in 2000, according to a special report in the latest International Migration Outlook.

Offshoring and Employment: Trends and Impacts.

Remember The Travels of the T-Shirt in the Global Economy? As we reported in these pages, this award-winning book tracked the circuitous making and marketing of a T-shirt, from the cotton fields of Texas and a factory in China to a used-clothes bazaar in Africa (“Global yarn”, in No. 251, September 2005, search www.oecdobserver.org).

City managers are important economic players, handling as they do billion-dollar budgets and thousands of employees. In its second territorial review in a series on competitive cities, the OECD explains that in the last few decades, city managers have recognised that inner city problems could not be resolved by throwing more money at them.

Minimum wages are hotly debated as ways of improving equity and boosting the wages of lower skilled workers. All OECD countries apply some kind of wage floor. Do they achieve their goals?

Balancing globalisation is not just about narrowing the gap between countries as winners and losers, but also how the gains and costs of globalisation are distributed within each country. The trouble is, though migration may increase interaction between ethnic groups, racial inequality still persists in the workplace, as an October 2005 report by the Canadian Labour Congress shows.

Matching jobs and qualifications is never easy. Some people inevitably work in jobs for which they are overqualified, but the rate of overqualification is higher among foreign-born populations.

We know quite a lot about how to increase employment rates, but there is no single road to Rome…or Moscow! So said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría, in an address to the meeting of G8 employment and labour ministers in Moscow, 9-10 October 2006. The secretary-general went on to outline the main lessons learned in the recent 2006 reassessment of the 1994 OECD Jobs Strategy and pointed to new challenges.

Globalisation produces winners and losers, including in employment. But while the job threat is real, it is manageable as long as the right policies are in place.

Are older workers denied choice about when and how they retire? Certainly, the average number of years that workers across the OECD can expect to spend in retirement has risen sharply, from less than 11 years in 1970 to just under 18 years in 2004 for men, and from less than 14 years to just under 23 years for women.

For growth and prosperity, companies must focus on high-quality products, customer service and continuous innovation. That means looking beyond shareholders and addressing the needs of ordinary workers, not least in OECD countries.

A decade ago, when the OECD Jobs Strategy was first launched, unemployment was high and persistent in several OECD countries. Since then, a number of them have made significant progress to reduce joblessness. At the same time, the challenges for labour market policies have become broader, with greater recognition of the importance of high employment and better working conditions for good living standards.

Poverty is multifaceted by nature, making cross-country comparisons difficult. Some countries may have a large poverty rate but a high turnover in and out of poverty, implying short poverty spells by many people. Also, poverty incidence may be low in aggregate terms, but with only a low probability of getting out of poverty permanently.

Many governments have made deliberate efforts to cut back on their civil service employment in recent years, both to contain public expenditure and also as part of wider regulatory reforms. Public servant jobs in central, regional and local administrations have decreased, sometimes sharply, in several countries, but have risen markedly in a few others, including Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain. Staffing has risen at regional or local levels in some countries, such as Japan and the US.