Global Employment Trends: January 2009

[Excerpt] The global financial crisis has triggered a serious slowdown in world economic growth including recession in the largest industrialized countries. Enterprises have stopped hiring and many are laying off workers in considerable numbers. This report examines what we know already about the impact of the crisis on jobs and what we could expect from several possible scenarios of the way it might evolve in the year ahead. In 2008, an estimated 6.0 per cent of the world’s workers were not working but looking for a job, up from 5.7 per cent in 2007. Experience shows that the longer people stay out of work the more their “employability” deteriorates, making it progressively harder to get back into work. This is especially worrying for young workers who may get trapped into a lifetime of weak attachment to the labour market alternating between low paid insecure work and outright unemployment. In many developing countries well over half of the workforce is employed in conditions that fall short of decent work, and breaking out of such situations is at the core of the global development challenge set out in the Millennium Declaration and its poverty-reducing goals. This report utilizes working poor and those in vulnerable employment (i.e. unpaid contributing family workers and own-account workers) which are workers most likely to be characterized by low and insecure employment, low earnings and productivity to help better understand labour market trends in developing economies. By the end of 2008 working poverty, vulnerable employment and unemployment were beginning to rise as the effects of the slowdown spread. If the recession deepens in 2009, as many forecasters expect, the global jobs crisis will worsen sharply. Furthermore, we can expect that for many of those who manage to keep a job, earnings and other conditions of employment will deteriorate. A central part of people’s lives is at work, and whether women and men have decent work has a significant impact on individual, family and community well-being. The absence of decent and productive work is the primary cause of poverty and social instability. The trends summarized in this report are therefore extremely worrying and serve to highlight the importance of an internationally coordinated effort to stop the slowdown and start the global economy on to a much more sustainable path. The assessment in this issue of Global Employment Trends is based on an analysis of labour market data that are available to date. This is still limited for the majority of countries and as more information becomes available it will be important to review the scale and pace of trends. Alternative scenarios for selected labour market indicators in 2008 and 2009 illustrate what might happen in labour markets if currently available economic forecasts are further revised downwards as seems likely. This report starts with an overview of economic events that are shaping labour market outcomes. Thereafter, an analysis of recent labour market developments is presented based on currently available information (see Annex 1 for tables referred to in this report; Annex 2 for scenarios; Annex 3 for regional figures and groupings of economies; and Annex 4 for a note on the methodology used to produce world and regional estimates). A separate section is dedicated to the projections of labour market indicators for 2008 and 2009 (see Annex 5 for methodological details). A final section concludes, and highlights a number of policy considerations

Does eurosclerosis matter ? - institutional reform and labor market performance in Central and Eastern European countries in the 1990s

This paper examines the labor market dynamics of six CEE countries over the last 10 years, paying special attention to the nature of labor market institutions these countries have adopted and their impact on labor market performance. This paper finds that, compared to EU countries, CEE countries fall in the"middle"of the flexibility scale regarding their employment protection legislation. While the effect of labor market institutions is hard to uncover, it should not be disregarded and they are likely to play an important role in the coming years.Environmental Economics&Policies,Labor Markets,Banks&Banking Reform,Health Economics&Finance,Municipal Financial Management

Helac-Phegas: a generator for all parton level processes

The updated version of the Helac-Phegas event generator is presented. The matrix elements are calculated through Dyson-Schwinger recursive equations. Helac-Phegas generates parton-level events with all necessary information, in the most recent Les Houches Accord format, for the study of any process within the Standard Model in hadron and lepton colliders

The Socioeconomic Background of the Divergence of Belarusian and Ukrainian Political Systems

The aim of this paper is to analyze the political, social and economic background of the divergence of Belarusian and Ukrainian transitions. We focus on Belarus in order to find explanation for questions such as why could Lukashenko remain the authoritarian leader of Belarus, while in Ukraine the position of the political elite had proved less stable and collapsed in 2004. On the theoretical framework of elite-sociology, we seek to determine whether the internal factors (as macroeconomic conditions, standard of living, the oppressive nature of the political system and the structure of the political elite) play a significant role in the operation of the domino effect. This article emphasises the determining role of immanent internal factors, thus the political stability in Belarus can be explained by the role of the suppressing political regime, the hindrance of democratic rights and the relatively good living conditions that followed the transformational recession. Whilst in Ukraine, the markedly different circumstances brought forth the success of the Orange Revolution

Expectations and the monetary policy transmission mechanism

In principle, the monetary policy transmission mechanism can be described rather simply. When the Federal Reserve raises its target for the federal funds rate, other interest rates also rise—reducing interest-sensitive spending and slowing the economy. Conversely, when the federal funds rate target is lowered, other interest rates tend to fall—stimulating spending and spurring economic activity. While adequate for some purposes, this stylized description of the transmission mechanism is less helpful in explaining the complex relationship between interest rates and monetary policy that is actually observed in financial markets. It also provides little insight into the source of the Federal Reserve’s leverage over market interest rates. Indeed, how does control over a relatively insignificant interest rate—the overnight federal funds rate—allow the Federal Reserve to influence the whole spectrum of short-term and long-term market rates? Sellon describes a simple analytical framework that provides a better conceptual understanding of the monetary policy transmission mechanism and also helps explain the complex relationships between monetary policy and interest rates observed in financial markets. In this framework, financial market expectations about future monetary policy play a central role. Indeed, expectations about the path of future policy actions are the driving force in determining market interest rates. Consequently, understanding how financial markets construct this expected policy path and what factors cause the path to change is critical to understanding the transmission process and the behavior of interest rates. This framework also highlights the important role central bank communications play in the transmission mechanism and the evolution of market interest rates.Monetary policy ; Interest rates ; Transmission mechanism (Monetary policy)

More Nonelderly Americans Face Problems Affording Prescription Drugs

Analyzes 2003-07 trends in unmet prescription drug needs among Americans under age 65 by insurance status and type of coverage, income level, and the presence of chronic conditions. Explores implications of the economic downturn and changes to Medicaid

Two-loop massless QCD corrections to the g+g→H+Hg+g \rightarrow H+H four-point amplitude

We compute the two-loop massless QCD corrections to the four-point amplitude $g+g \rightarrow H+H$ resulting from effective operator insertions that describe the interaction of a Higgs boson with gluons in the infinite top quark mass limit. This amplitude is an essential ingredient to the third-order QCD corrections to Higgs boson pair production. We have implemented our results in a numerical code that can be used for further phenomenological studies.Comment: 3 figure

Fermion-pair Production above the Z and Search for New Phenomena

A review of the measurements of hadron, flavour-tagged and lepton-pair production cross-sections and lepton-pair forward-backward asymmetries performed by the four LEP experiments ALEPH, DELPHI, L3 and OPAL at energies between 130 and 183 GeV is given. All 183 GeV results are preliminary. The searches by the four collaborations for new physics phenomena like contact interactions and compositeness, exchange of R-parity violating sneutrinos or squarks, leptoquarks or additional heavy gauge bosons Z' are summarized. No evidence for deviations from the Standard Model expectations is found and new or improved limits are derived.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables, presented at the XXXIInd Rencontres de Moriond, Electroweak Interactions and Unified Theories, Les Arcs, France, March 14-21, 199

Police Alcohol-Related Services Study (PASS), Phase II: A Description of the Beliefs, Perceptions and Attitudes of Anchorage Police Department Employees

The principal aim of the Police Alcohol-related Services Study (PASS) was to expand knowledge about the fiscal, organizational, and cultural impact of citizen alcohol use on the Anchorage Police Department (APD). Phase II of the study employed a voluntary, self-administered questionnaire provided to all members of the APD regardless of rank, sworn status, or operational division. The questionnaire was designed to explore respondents' perceptions of their alcohol-related workload; perceptions of community problems; perceived links between alcohol use and selected social problems; attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs about the policing of alcohol-related incidents and the people involved with them; and personal and vicarious experience with alcohol-related incidents. The report describes survey response through comparison of APD employee responses across divisions within the department: operations vs. administration, patrol vs. non-patrol, and sworn vs. non-sworn.Part I. Project Overview & Summary of Findings / Part II. Alcohol-Related Workload: APD Employee Perspectives / Appendice