From Poverty to Power Green, Oxfam 2008 - weman

3 POVERTY AND WEALTH THE CHANGING WORLD OF WORKbecause they are landless, or to supplement farm earnings. Work canbe degrading, a desperate scrabble for survival, with people enduringdangers, exhaustion, and hardship to keep hunger at bay. However,decent work can be central to an individual’s identity and sense ofwell-being. Good-quality jobs enhance the quality of life by guaranteeingrights and freedoms and equipping individuals to exercisethose rights, as well as paying a decent wage.MORE JOBS, MORE JOBLESSIn 2005, close to 2.85 billion people aged 15 and older worked formoney – nearly half the population of the planet. The agriculturalsector employs the largest labour force in the world, 1.3 billion people,a third of whom work as plantation workers or day labourers; morethan half of them are women. 90 As noted earlier, people are leavingagriculture in droves, but contrary to previous centuries when workersmoved out of agriculture into industry, overall industrial employmentis also falling. The slack is being taken up by the servicesector – a vast spectrum of jobs covering everything from maids tostreet-sellers to modern banks. 91Not all those who want work can find it: open unemployment inthe world was about 190 million in 2007. 92 An additional 310 millionpeople are under-employed, working for only a few hours a week. 93 Inall, close to one billion new jobs will be needed in the next decade,more than double what the economy will produce at current rates.Youth account for a quarter of the world’s working-age population,but almost half of its unemployed. Across all countries, theunemployment rate is two to three times higher for young people thanfor adults, and worldwide one in seven young people has no job.The particular tragedy of youth unemployment is that, like childmalnutrition, it leads to life-long harm because it means foregoing theaccumulation of on-the-job skills and an employment history thatwould send positive signals to future employers. Besides the personalcost involved, youth unemployment has clear costs to society in termsof wasted talent, and the likelihood that disenchanted young peoplewill turn to crime and violence.149