Gallup Chairman and CEO Jim Clifton warns that the real
unemployment rate in the world is above 50 percent and that the
next global war will be fought over good jobs.
“What everyone in the world wants is a good job. This is one of
Gallup's biggest discoveries ever, yet almost no leader in the
world knows this,”
he told South Korea's Chosun Ilbo
newspaper.
“Of the 7 billion people in the world, there are 5 billion
adults aged 15 and older. Of these 5 billion, 3 billion tell
Gallup they desire a full-time job. Only 1.3 billion actually
have a good job, which means that the real unemployment rate in
the world is over 50%,” he said.
“The brutal reality is we're not creating enough good jobs to
meet the will of the world — the global will to have a good
job,” he said. “Not meeting that need will accelerate global
instability. My message is that it is possible to turn things
around quickly — we just need to get very serious and
intentional about it,” he said.
He said Gallup defines a good job as one with 30-plus hours of
work a week with a consistent paycheck from an employer.
“A great job is a job in which you believe your boss cares about
your development, you can use your strengths every day at work,
and you believe your work makes a contribution to something,” he
said.
Meanwhile, the job market may be on more unstable footing than
most people realize despite the 280,000 new U.S. jobs added in
May.
“Labor-market indexes produced by the Federal Reserve and the
privately run Conference Board each show the job market growing
at a slower pace now compared to the end of last year,”
MarketWatch reports.