Leaving no one behind the imperative of inclusive development

48
Leaving no one behind
altogether, particularly women and youth. Globally in 2014, 2 billion people
of working age were not participating in the labour force, and the number is
projected to continue growing (ILO, 2016b). Part of the increase is explained
by a rise in the number of years spent in education and by the phenomenon
of population ageing. Since 2008, however, many rich countries and some
middle-income countries have witnessed an increase in the number of
discouraged workers, who are not counted among the unemployed as they
are no longer actively seeking employment. In particular, the crisis reinforced
the long-term downward trend in youth participation rates. Crisis-led rises in
youth unemployment would have been stronger had many young workers
not dropped out of the labour market. While some youth may have returned
to the education system, the share of those who are NEET increased in 30 of
the 40 countries with data from 2007 to 2014. 35 This severe waste of human
potential can have drastic repercussions in terms of marginalization and
exclusion both for the young people affected and for societies at large.
b. Decent work deficits
Trends in unemployment do not fully reflect lack of decent work opportunities,
given that not all existing jobs take people out of poverty or promote social
inclusion. In countries with high levels of poverty and lacking formal social
protection systems, most workers cannot afford to stay unemployed. In
developing countries, which are home to 82 per cent of the world’s workingage
population, the majority of people work but they struggle to earn income
through what is commonly defined as vulnerable employment (own-account
work and work in family businesses), often in the informal sector where salaries
are lower than in formal employment, social protection is largely absent and
working conditions are poorer. For the majority of workers, informal jobs are
not a choice but reflect the limited availability of formal, more desirable jobs, as
well as workers’ limited bargaining power in the businesses that employ them.
There are few reliable estimates of informality or of the total extent of
underemployment – the shortfall in the income that can be earned from work
or in the number of hours of work – which makes difficult the monitoring
of the global employment situation. One series of comparable estimates puts
the share of informal employment outside of agriculture at 82 per cent of
total employment in South Asia, 65 per cent in East Asia (excluding China)
and South-East Asia, 51 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean and
66 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa (ILO, 2013a and 2014b). 36 Adding data on
the agricultural sector would raise these averages, as much of agricultural
employment in developing regions is informal as well. Alternative estimates
35
Ibid.
36
Data for sub-Saharan Africa are available for a limited number of countries. Data and metadata on
women and men in the informal economy are also available online through the ILO labour statistics
database Laborsta (http://laborsta.ilo.org).