Global Job Picture Poor for ‘90s, Expert Predicts

WASHINGTON — About 400 million new workers are expected to enter the world’s labor force this decade, and their prospects of finding jobs are gloomy, an international labor expert said Friday.

Juhani Lonnroth, Finnish director of the International Labor Organization’s employment department, said the world’s working-age population will grow by 700 million during the 1990s, and about 400 million jobs will have to be created to absorb those expected to seek employment.

Those estimates are based on the assumption that 55% of the 700 million will seek work, Lonnroth said in a speech prepared for a meeting of businessmen sponsored by Cable News Network.

“Unfortunately, the prospects of achieving these rates of job creation are not very bright,” Lonnroth said.

Particularly gloomy spots are Russia and Africa, he said.

Studies show that state enterprises in Russia are overstaffed by 25%, and 15 million workers will lose their jobs in 1992. Another 30 million workers in the state sector in Russia are chronically underemployed, he said.

Population growth in Africa means that “an extra 10 million jobs per year must be created just to maintain present levels of employment,” Lonnroth said.

He said the outlook for Africa is dim because of the debt burden, commodity price collapses, falling rates of investment, natural disasters and political and social unrest.

Even in the advanced, industrialized countries where the rate of growth of the population and labor supply is rapidly declining, “some analysts estimate that the rate of job generation during the next 10 years will barely match the growth of the supply of labor.”