Unemployment Remains Global Problem

Advanced economies like the U.S. and the U.K. might be experiencing a promising uptick in their economies but a clutch of new figures have highlighted the danger of the inequality of unemployment around the world.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) – meeting in Davos, Switzerland this week – has a soul aim of “improving the state of the world.” In a new discussion paper Monday, the group underlined its belief that rising income inequality was damaging future economic well-being and said there had been little in the way of concrete policy guidance to combat the problem. Also on Monday, international development charity Oxfam warned that wealth inequality is “rising fast” and estimated that the combined wealth of the world’s richest 1 percent could overtake that of the remaining 99 percent by 2016.

Meanwhile, global unemployment is set to rise in the next five years, according to a new report from the International Labour Organization (ILO) on Tuesday, which stated that joblessness was forecast to increase by 3 million in 2015. The subject was also central to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech Tuesday night, with plans from the President on trying to slow the widening gap between the richest and poorest in America.