The Job Deficit

Social Policy Section
Social Development Division, United Nations ESCAP

The Job Deficit

BACKGROUNDER 2 - SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

Lack of access to employment that is both productive and pays enough is one of the most important causes of poverty. Some economies in the region have had more success than others in creating and sustaining jobs through large-scale economic transitions.

For example, Hong Kong, China; the Republic of Korea; and Singapore first built up labour-intensive industries and then managed to switch to skill-intensive ones. Unemployment in these economies is relatively insignificant, and labour shortages are the rule. These economies invested heavily in education and training.

The next tier of economies, the newly industrializing countries and areas such as Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, are still struggling to make that change. Although unemployment is low in Indonesia and Thailand, more than half the working population is dependent on agriculture. The Philippines has a high unemployment rate: 9.5 per cent in 1994/95. It relies on promoting employment abroad to give jobs to its growing population.

Economies moving from a planned to a market structure face a different set of challenges. Reforms in former socialist states in Central and South-East Asia may put hundreds of thousands of workers in state and collective enterprises out of a job. Mongolia already has 9.4 per cent unemployment. South Asia, meanwhile, remains plagued by underemployment, caused in part by its large agricultural sector and its slow pace of economic development. In Nepal, almost half the employed work only for part of the year. In Sri Lanka, open unemployment is high, at 13.6 per cent in 1994/95. Pacific island developing economies are similarly beset by slow economic growth at the same time their labour pool is expanding rapidly. In the cities, underemployment is creating a class of disaffected.

Nearly all these economies are affected, in one way or another, by the growing numbers of contract labourers and unemployed youth. In Asia and the Pacific, workers under the age of 24 constitute the bulk of the unemployed in many countries and areas. The proportion of first-time job seekers in the total population of unemployed has increased over the past decade. In 1994, male youth constituted two-thirds of the male unemployed population in Indonesia, 46 per cent in the Philippines and 27 per cent in Singapore. The problems of migrant labour are also taking centre stage, since many workers remain unprotected from abusive conditions.

Child exploitation is another serious concern. Sixty per cent of the 120 million children between five and 14 years old worldwide who are estimated to be employed as full-time workers are in Asia. Most of them are in South and South-East Asia, where poverty and educational inadequacies have left these children vulnerable to exploitation.

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