Geneva, January 24:

Five million more people risk being made unemployed in 2008 as the global economy struggles with the US subprime crisis and rising oil prices, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said.

“This year’s global jobs picture is one of contrasts and uncertainty,” said ILO director general Juan Somavia. “While global growth is annually producing millions of new jobs, unemployment remains unacceptably high and may go to levels not seen before this year,” he added. The gloomy outlook is in contrast to the previous year, hailed by ILO as a ‘watershed’ with 45 million new jobs created and only a slight rise in unemployment, which stood at 189.9 million people at the end of 2007.

The ILO said in its Global Employment Trends report for 2008 that global jobless rate is set to go up to 6.1 per cent from six per cent the previous year.

Economist Dorothea Schmidt said that five million fewer jobs are expected to be created in the year ahead. But the organisation’s employment director Jose Salazar-Xirinachs conceded that these forecasts will have to be further revised after recent market turmoil wiped billions of dollars off stock exchanges, further stoking fears of a global recession.