OECD SEES 1 IN 10 OUT OF WORK BY NEXT YEAR

One in ten workers in advanced economies will be without a job next year “practically with no exceptions”, the head of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said yesterday.

In a graphic indication of the global recession's transmission from the financial sector to the rest of the economy, Angel Gurría warned that the ranks of the unemployed in the 30 advanced OECD countries would swell “by about 25m people, by far the largest and most rapid increase in OECD unemployment in the postwar period”.

The misery of joblessness, what Mr Gurría described as “rapidly turning into a jobs and social crisis”, would come as he said the OECD expected advanced economies to contract by 4.3 per cent in 2009 with little or no growth expected in 2010. The forecast is significantly worse than the International Monetary Fund's most recent estimate of a 3-3.5 per cent contraction for 2009.