Thursday, June 10, 2010

An Upbeat Global Employment Picture

The prospects for global employment seems to be materially improving, that's according to the Economist.
The Economist writes, (bold highlights added)

``FEARS of a “jobless recovery” in the West have abounded ever since the world economy returned from the abyss last year. For some, the latest quarterly survey from Manpower, a global employment-services company, brings timely good news. Of the 36 countries included in Manpower’s survey, employers in 30 of them are increasingly bullish about their hiring plans for the next three months compared with the third quarter of 2009. Only in five countries, all of them in debt-laden Europe, are employers expecting negative hiring activity over the next quarter. This compares favourably, however, to the seven European countries with a negative outlook just three months ago. The survey suggests that the BICs (Brazil, India and China) bounce will continue. The three countries, along with Taiwan, report the most positive hiring plans in the survey, with China reporting its strongest hiring plans since the survey began there in 2005."

Unlike the mainstream, I'm not a stickler of "employment" as the key measure of economic progress, because employment is just one of the many factors that contribute to capital accumulation or economic prosperity.

But if the survey is accurate then much of the world seems now on a mend or on an accelerating phase of cyclical recovery.

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