UN Says More Than 5M Will Lose Jobs

GENEVA (AP) — More than 5 million people will lose their jobs this year as the world economy slows, an official at the U.N. labor agency said Thursday.

Most job losses will occur in rich countries, but millions of "working poor" in the developing world who won't be counted also will suffer, said Dorothea Schmidt, an economist at the International Labor Organization.

Schmidt said the latest global growth figures from the International Monetary Fund prompted the labor agency to review its jobs forecast for 2008. The Washington-based IMF cut its growth projection from 4.4 percent to 4.1 percent Tuesday.

The Geneva-based ILO published a report last week predicting that the number of unemployed worldwide would increase to about 195 million from 190 million last year.

But with the IMF's revised growth rate, "there will be a larger impact than the 5 million we estimated," Schmidt said. She added it was too soon to give precise figures as job losses would depend on growth rates in individual countries.

Unemployment figures are drawn largely from industrialized countries that can afford to support workers who have lost their jobs, she said. Tens of millions of people in poorer countries would also be affected by a global downturn but would not appear in the unemployment figures.

"The 1.2 billion people at the working poverty level of $2 a day, and the additional almost 500 million working poor at the $1 a day level — this number will increase dramatically," Schmidt said.

Tuesday's IMF report was the second time the organization has cut its 2008 growth projection. Last July, the IMF estimated the world economy would grow 5.2 percent in 2008, but in October the estimate was reduced to 4.4 percent.

ILO said sound economic growth in 2007 helped stabilize the global unemployment rate at 6 percent, with roughly as many new jobs created as existing jobs lost.