Job losses have been mounting in
the West, South-East Asia, and
the West Asian countries, where the governments are under
pressure to salvage the jobs of the local population. 20
million Chinese (figure greater than the population of
Australia) rural migrants have also lost their jobs because of the nation's
economic downturn. This is based on a data collected from 50 villages in
15 provinces. It came just days after the government warned that 2009
would be "possibly the toughest year"
for the economic development of China since the turn of the
century.
The US Company, like IBM, is offering its laid-off employees
in North America a chance to take jobs with the company in India,
Nigeria, Russia or other counties through Project Match, a media report
said. According to Lee Conrad, spokesperson for the IBM worker's
group, "IBM not only is offshoring its work to low-cost counties, now
IBM wants employees to offshore themselves. At a time of rising
unemployment, IBM should be looking to keep both the work and workers
in United States."
In UK, unemployment peaked to 1.97 million between October
and December 2008, a tad lower than predicted 2 million, but was
the highest since 1997. UK's unemployment rate reached 6.3%, the
highest since 1998.
In India, massive job losses in labor-intensive industries are
posing problems to the government. Exports for January 2009
nose-dived by 22% and projections indicate that up
to 10 million persons could lose jobs in the fiscal ending March
2009. A survey conducted by the Indian Labor Ministry, confirmed the
five hundred thousand job losses in between October to December
2008, affecting workers belong to 20 sectors in 11 states and union
territories. The sectors included textiles, metals, gems and jewelry,
automobile, transport, and IT /BPO, which contributes over 65% of India's
GDP. |
