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Nonfiction in response to Decent Work and Economic Growth
August 2018

Revitalizing the Global Economy

By Amrita Bhasin
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America is currently seeing increasingly beneficial job and GDP growth. The country is facing a national labor shortage, and the unemployment rate is lower than it has been in a long time.

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However, if you look at unemployment and job growth worldwide, other countries don’t exactly mirror the economic vitality America has recently seen.

 

Worldwide, 10% of “youth are neither in the educational system nor working” (United Nations). Next year, 11 million more people will be out of work than are currently unemployed today. Because of a combination of cultural and social thinking, women are more likely to be unemployed in these scenarios than men. Considering that in many less developed countries, women are the ones taking care of children, it is imperative that these young mothers are able to provide for their families.

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While this may not be as relevant to the United States today, in parts of the world, “more than half of child laborers (85 million children) participate in hazardous work and 59 per cent of them work in the agricultural sector” (United Nations).

 

Aside from child labor, “over 60 per cent of all workers lack any kind of employment contract,” providing an opportunity for employees to exploit workers. Because there is no contract to refer to, it is easy for laborers to be taken advantage of especially in certain sectors in society (International Labor Organization). 

 

In addition, “roughly half the world’s population still lives on the equivalent of about US$2 a day” (International Labor Organization). Wage growth is yet another problem that most of the world needs to combat in order for economic growth to revitalize the economy.

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In the end, although America has seen a recent economic boom, it is imperative that society consider some of the age-old problems that continue to plague parts of the world. Research has shown that because of globalization, growth in one part of the world inevitably spurs growth in another country. It is in everyone’s best interests to help revitalize economies in other nations.

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