Mass protests have been held across Spain against the conservative government's labour market reforms.
The trade unions which organised the rallies said half a
million protesters marched through Madrid. Police put the turnout in the
capital at about 50,000.
Spanish media say protests took place in 57 towns and cities.
There was anger at a labour reform law that cuts severance
pay and gives employers more flexibility over jobs. The unemployment
rate has reached 23%.
The motto of the protests was "no to the labour reform that
is unfair to workers, inefficient for the economy and useless for jobs,"
Spain's El Pais news website reports.
On 10 February the government of Mariano Rajoy approved a law
reducing maximum severance pay to 33 days' salary for each year worked,
compared with the current 45 days.
Employers will also be able to lay workers off outside Spain's traditional sector-wide collective bargaining arrangements.
Spain's unemployment rate is the highest in the EU, hitting young job-seekers especially hard.
The BBC's Tom Burridge in Madrid says several of the capital's main avenues were packed with demonstrators on Sunday.
There were calls for a general strike, and our correspondent
says that is likely to be the unions' next option. But it is something
the Spanish government is desperate to avoid.
The government insists the reforms will create a more
flexible system for businesses and workers, in a country with a stagnant
economy that needs to start creating jobs.
Barcelona saw the second largest rally - about 400,000
according to the unions, while the Catalan Interior Department put the
crowd at 30,000.
Do you think that there will happen the same with Spain as with Greece?
Unemployment in the eurozone was 11% in April, unchanged from March, but still the highest since records began in 1995.
Spain had the highest rate in the eurozone at 24.3%, while Austria had the lowest at 3.9%, according to the official figures from Eurostat.
A seasonally adjusted total of 17.4 million people were unemployed in the eurozone, up from 17.3 million.
In the 27-nation European Union, the jobless rate was 10.3%, up from 10.2%.
"Today's grim unemployment figures provide a sober reminder that the eurozone economy is in desperate need of a more expansionary policy stance," said Martin van Vliet, an economist at ING.
"The labour market recession in the eurozone continues to spread and deepen."
The rate of unemployment in both France and Italy rose to 10.2%, from 10.1% in March.
But Germany bucked the trend, with the rate of unemployment dropping to 5.4% from 5.5% the previous month.
OTTAWA Canada plans to accept as many as 10,000 more skilled workers into the country in 2012, in part to help deal with a massive backlog in applications.
The Federal Skilled Worker Program is the primary stream for
permanent immigration to Canada and next year, Citizenship and
Immigration will accept between 55,000-57,000 people.
By the end of this year, between 47,000-47,400 skilled workers will have been accepted under this program.
The governments No. 1 priority remains the economy. We recognize
the importance of immigration to our labour market and we value the
contributions of skilled immigrants who add to our international
competitiveness, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said in a press
release Thursday.
We are committed to facilitating the arrival of the best and the brightest to our country.
Do you think that it is good for Canada that they accept the most skilled immigrants ? Or is it just unfair?
Youth unemployment was down by 17,000 to 1.02 million. But the number of people unemployed for more than a year increased by 27,000 to 887,000, the worst total since 1996.
The number of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance fell by 13,700 to 1.59 million in April.
Part-time working hit another record. The ONS said the total number was 7.99 million between January and March, up 118,000 compared with the previous three month period between October and December.
Those working part-time because they couldn't find a full-time job was also the highest since records began in 1992 at 1.42 million, up 73,000 on the previous quarter.
Of the 45,000 drop in unemployment, 42,000 were men and just 3,000 were women.
"It's still women and young people who are bearing the brunt of the recession," said the Unison union general secretary Dave Prentis.
I don't have enough work to fully pay my rent and support myself. It's a combination of benefits and friends until I hit a good patch where I can pay a few things off
Employment Minister Chris Grayling said overall the figures were a "welcome step in the right direction".
"For a number of months now, employment has been growing and this is starting to feed through into improving unemployment figures.
"However, we still face significant international uncertainty so we need to hold firm on our current economic strategy and continue to do everything we can to ensure unemployment continues to fall."
Bank of England governor Sir Mervyn King also said that the latest figures were consistent with a gradual recovery in the UK economy, while pointing to the huge risk to the UK economy posed by the crisis in the eurozone, the UK's biggest trading partner.
Shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne said it was "really worrying to see the soaring long term costs as the number of long term unemployed surges towards the 1 million mark - the highest since the Tories were in Government last time".
My favorite measure of the labor market is the employment-population ratio, because it isnt subject to questions about whether people not in the labor force are really just as unemployed as those in the measured labor force without jobs. But the EP ratio has its own problems right now, mainly because of demography: the baby boomer wave is now hitting the labor force statistics, and there are good reasons to expect a secular decline in labor force participation.
So, these days I focus on the employment-population ratio for prime-age adults:
And yes, things have really looked up over the past few months. But theres still a huge way to go.
What do you think about the improvements of the labour market? please comment, so we know your opinion.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 5/5 - (1 Stemmen) Tags:New york Times
27-03-2012
Outlook for global labour market worsens
The outlook for the global labour market has worsened from last year, the International Labour Organization (ILO) says.
It called the situation an "urgent challenge" and said governments needed to create 600 million jobs over the next decade.
The ILO said it was more pessimistic because of the weaker global economy.
It added that globally some 1.1 billion people were either unemployed or living in poverty.
One bright spot was the ILO's finding that job creation was pushed up by good economic conditions in large emerging economies in Latin America and East Asia.
Growth concern
The ILO made its claims in its annual Global Employment Trends report.
"Despite strenuous government efforts, the jobs crisis continues unabated, with one in three workers worldwide, or an estimated 1.1bn people, either unemployed or living in poverty," said ILO director-general Juan Somavia.
The ILO cited three years of crisis conditions in the global labour market as the reason for its worsening assessment.
"Our forecast has become much more pessimistic than last year's, with the possibility of a serious deceleration of the growth rate," said the ILO's senior economist Ekkehard Ernst.
Discouraged workers
In its report, the ILO said that there are 29 million fewer workers in the
global labour force than they forecast before the economic slowdown started in 2009.
Those 29 million people are referred to as "discouraged workers", or people that have decided to stop looking for work because they think they are unlikely to find a job.
If these discouraged workers were counted in the total jobless figures, then that would push the global unemployment rate to 6.9% from 6%, the ILO said. That is about 225 million people worldwide.
The ILO also added that young people continue to be among the worst hit by the jobs crisis and that future prospects for them are bleak.
"Judging by the present course, there is little hope for a substantial improvement in their near-term employment prospects," the report said.
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