In our society, the American media dominates the airwaves.
For that reason, we sometimes lose sight of the fact that the entire world is suffering through a massive recession, and not just the United States.
This fact is illustrated clearly by the International Labor Organization's recent proclamation that there will be a total of 239 million people unemployed throughout the world by the end of 2009.
Now, even in the best of times, there are always tens of millions of people unemployed throughout the world. That's just the way that it is.
However, the International Labor Organization says that a total of 59 million people have joined the ranks of the unemployed since the beginning of the financial meltdown in 2007.
This is an unreal number of people, and just further illustrates the point that the entire world is suffering through this recession, and not just the United States.
The International Labor Organization is currently holding a summit in Geneva that is being attended by a number of world leaders. The summit is being held for the purposes of both pointing out and helping to address the problem of rising unemployment throughout the world.
The economic meltdown has left few industries untouched in its wake. Automotive, financial and construction are just a few of the industries that have witnessed a major downturn since the end of 2007.
As mentioned, the United States is currently dealing with their highest unemployment rate in nearly 30 years.
While the situation in the States is surely bad (the unemployment rate in that country is within reach of 10%), things are much, much worse in other countries.
Countries such as Spain and Russia have been clobbered by the "Great Recession".
Things are so bad that some countries are refusing to publish unemployment numbers for the time being, for fear of civil unrest.
The International Labor Organization is warning that the "unemployment crisis" may last for a substantial period of time.
They warn that we could see an "eight year crisis" that continues long after the financial markets have started to right themselves.
239 million people - that means that there are 239 million people throughout the world who would like full-time work, but can't find any.
If that wasn't bad enough, nearly 60 MILLION people have joined the ranks of the unemployed since the beginning of this downturn. That is an unbelievable amount of people.
News like this really makes you wonder:
1. Which industries are going to employ all of these people over the next 10-20 years?
2. How long will it be until we return to pre-2008 unemployment levels?
3. How much of a strain will the flood of newly unemployed people have on governments throughout the world?
4. If these people are able to find jobs, will they make anything close to the amount of money that they made before?
These numbers are unbelievably high and almost impossible to fully comprehend. They just seek to illustrate how long and hard the road will be towards restoring the global economy to its previous standing.
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In our society, the American media dominates the airwaves.
