
ILO Report 2025
Trends and challenges in employment and social affairs.
AH – 02/2025
The latest report of the International Labour
Organization (ILO) analyses the current situations in the labour markets, as well as the most
important challenges and trends in the employment and social affairs sectors.
It addressed issues such as unofficial working, the shortfall in creating
decent jobs, gender-specific inequalities and high youth unemployment. The
report also shows that in high-income countries, the increase in the labour
force participation of older people has compensated the demographic aging.
Economic recovery has slowed down
Although global
employment growth remained stable in 2024, the labour market will continue to be
challenged by geopolitical tensions, rising energy prices, the costs of climate
change and unresolved debt problems.
The unemployment
rate remained at previous year's level of five per cent. However, young people
are especially affected here as their rate is 12.6 per cent. The ILO
anticipates a slowdown in economic growth, despite moderate economic growth of
3.2 per cent realised during the period under review. This will also have a
negative impact on recovery in labour market, and it will have particular
consequences for countries with high population growth. Wage growth has not yet
been able to fully make up for the income losses caused by the pandemic. Which,
according to the ILO, can be attributed to the weak increase in employment
growth.
Declining labour force participation hampered employment growth
Weakening employment growth is mainly due
to labour force participation. It has declined globally, especially among young
people. According to the ILO, 85.5 million young men (13.1 per cent) and 173.3
million young women (28.2 per cent) worldwide were not in education, employment
or training in 2024. This development is somewhat different in
high-income countries: Here, the overall employment rate rose by almost one per
cent, which was due to older people increasingly participating in the labour
force. The same applied to all countries – whether they have high or low
incomes: Significant gender-specific differences still exist when it comes to
participating in the labour force.
Conclusion and recommendations
The report referred to a global employment
gap of 402 million people in 2024: 186 million people are unemployed, another
137 million are discouraged and 79 million are unable to work due to other
commitments.
Expanding decent work opportunities remains
a central pillar in pursuing the UN's sustainable development goals, especially
in lower-income countries. Faster productivity growth is needed here to reduce
the deficits.
The ILO report recommends investing in
qualification measures and training, as well as expanding social protection.
Opportunities for future employment growth are seen in the digital technologies
and green energy sectors in particular. Many countries need to invest in the
necessary infrastructures in order to take advantage of such opportunities.