Global unemployment rate to climb in 2008

By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA (Reuters) - More people will be out of work in 2008 as a result of global economic cooling, and any major slowdown could cause disruption and further hike unemployment, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said on Thursday.

In a report issued in the wake of heavy losses in world stock markets, and amid growing fears of worldwide recession, the United Nations agency said the world unemployment rate would climb to 6.1 percent this year from 6.0 percent in 2007.

Jose Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, head of the ILO's employment sector, said the jitters that bled world markets this week had not yet trickled through to employment figures, which are considered a lagging indicator of world economic health.

But he said the 2008 projections may turn out to be overly bright if the world economy expands by less than the 4.8 percent estimated by the International Monetary Fund.

"This scenario ... would obviously be worse if global growth turns out to be less than predicted," Salazar-Xirinachs told a news briefing in Geneva, where the ILO is headquartered.

"It is very likely that there will be revisions of rates of growth downward," he said.

In its Global Employment Trends report, the ILO estimated that 3 billion people aged 15 and older had jobs in 2007, up nearly 2 percent from the year before and more than 17 percent higher than in 1997.

There were 190 million unemployed in 2007.