Asian Labour Markets Report - Some Major challenges coming up

The International Labour Organisation (an arm of the United Nations and completely useless as far as actually doing something about labour is concerned) has released a report talking about the growth in the Asian Labour Markets from 1.8 Billion workers currently to 2 Billion in 2015. The report clearly states that there would not be sufficient jobs for all of them (not surprising, there aren't sufficient jobs for the current workers anyway). The report also mentions that this growth is not socially and environmentally sustainable (more about this later). The report also points to the following aspects

• An ageing labour force that is expected to see between 1 in 10, and in some cases 1 in 4 people in some countries over 65 years of age by 2015;
• The need to improve job quality and ensure equal opportunities between young women and men;
• Increasing migration that will see millions of workers in Asia leaving their homes each year to work abroad;
• Accelerating rural-urban migration that will see the region’s urban population grow by 350 million by 2015, while the rural population will increase by only 15 million;
• The inability of wage growth to keep pace with labour productivity growth in some countries;
• Rising income inequalities between extreme poor and other workers, as well between as rural and urban workers; and,
• Long working hours becoming the norm in many parts of Asia.

Now you would have noticed the issues with this report. The basic assumption is that informal economy is bad, and only the organised economy is good. Erm, why? In other words, if one has to be living and in receipt of a living income or more, the only way to do so is to have a proper JOB. There is no mention of credit markets, availability of SME financing and markets, microbanking, infrastructure improvements, education for business, banking, innovation, entrepreneurship and a whole host of other issues which can push these additional productive workers to become wealth generators in their own right, take responsibility for their own insurance and pension, etc. Dressing up this issue with the social and environmental claptrap is typical of this organisation and this is the primary reason why it is irrelevant and ineffective. I mean, just why do these topics have to be conjoined? what's the benefit? Most of the issues raised are irrelevant to manage these additional workers.


All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!