Reaffirming the idea that central banks have largely resolved the problem of unemployment, 2019 figures show employment at record highs for all but one of the world’s biggest economies, compared to five years ago.
Developed economies fared somewhat better than their EM counterparts, with Japan, Germany, US and the UK seeing unemployment drop by more than a third since 2014, while the fall in China and Russia was less than 10%.
Brazil was the only economy to experience a rise in unemployment over the same period, with 11.4% of the population failing to secure a job in 2019 (compared to 6.6% in 2014).
A growing concern for economic ministries and economists around the world, instead, is the lack of wage growth to go alongside the rise in jobs. The issue is prevalent in DMs, while EM wages have largely prospered in the last two decades.
Real average wages in the advanced-country constituents of the G20 rose just 9% between 1999 and 2017, while emerging G20 states they tripled, according to the International Labour Organization.