Unemployment could rise to almost 22 million in the 17-nation eurozone over the next four years unless European nations provide more help for small firms and the millions of youth struggling to find work, the UN labor office said yesterday.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) said in a new report that a focus on job creation could avert the loss of another 4.5 million jobs on top of the current 17.4 million unemployed. However, the Geneva-based organization concluded it would require a quick, major policy shift “out of the austerity trap” by all the 17 countries that use the joint euro currency.
The sustainability of the European monetary union has been called into question by high government debt, high borrowing costs and tough negotiations over bailouts and spending cuts.
A raging debate has erupted this spring over whether austerity measures mandated by the EU and its single biggest economy, Germany, are doing more harm than good by stunting growth in some of the indebted eurozone nations. France’s election of Socialist Francoise Hollande as president in May was seen as a rejection of austerity policies.
ILO Director-General Juan Somavia said the eurozone is undergoing its worst jobs crisis since the creation of a single currency in 1999. With the rate of youth unemployment exceeding 50 percent in some countries, he said, any worsening of the situation would add to social unrest and further erode confidence in financial systems and governments.
“The report shows that by embracing a eurozone growth strategy with jobs at its core, the recovery is still possible” without any breakup in the currency union, he said. “But the window of opportunity is closing.”
The ILO’s prescription for recovery focused on repairs to financial systems, such as boosting banks’ solvency, making credit easier to obtain for small enterprises and putting in more youth training and school-to-work programs, such as those in wealthy nations like Austria and the Netherlands.
The ILO said one of the biggest challenges for the eurozone remains its focus on traditional policies that Somavia predicted would only exacerbate the widespread problem of not enough jobs.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained